Crouching Malice 2: Perilous Nightmares
by Codename Deus
Summary: Yutaka and Lucy thought the past was behind them. But indeed the past comes back to haunt Lucy in particular, and when her experiences in the present time are not helping, things take a horrifying twist.
1. Chapter 1

**Terror Firma: **

"Mayday, do you copy?" The pilot's panicked voice echoed throughout the plane.

Its engines had all shut off and the power went out under mysterious, unknown circumstances.

Yutaka Keiji and Lucy Colvin-Carrington were on board this plane. Yutaka is an aspiring ninja who was betrayed by his father Itachi after he killed a chef employed by the Golden Dragon ninja clan, a clan that Itachi had leadership over until it disbanded shortly after the one night war with its fierce rival clan Black Mamba, the clan Yutaka had switched to on the night of the battle.

The village that they had resided in, Kuromokuzai, was the setting for that ferocious battle and was completely destroyed as a result of a wildfire that ravaged houses, killing hundreds. Many more were killed in battle.

Yutaka gazed upon a photo of him and Itachi as proud father and son. It was taken recently. They were smiling.

Although he will not forgive Itachi he is still upset at the thought of his father betraying him.

The plane mysteriously hovered in the air despite the lack of engine power. It was at a complete stop at over ten thousand feet above terra firma. The panicked cries and screams of the fellow passengers were dominating over the otherwise complete silence of everything else.

Lucy looked on with her demon like red eyes, her face completely concealed from view behind a thick wall of her dark, stringy hair. She was smiling. She was the only one who appeared calm now that Yutaka suddenly remembered where he was and the potential peril that he and everybody else on the plane were facing. His heart was throbbing against his ribcage as his heartbeat increased rapidly and it seemed ready to burst out of his chest at any second.

Lucy began fidgeting and twitching. Yutaka had not seen her do this before and he looked worried. He was worried.

The plane shook violently as Lucy's twitching got worse. She rose to her feet and her arms were outstretched to either side of her. Her face pointed towards the heavens above and her twitching unnerved Yutaka. He was worried about what might happen to her.

Lucy then broke the deadly silence on the plane when she let out a terrifying scream. It sounded like she was in pain, tears falling from her eyes. Yutaka got up to calm her down but Lucy declined his help when she telekinetically shoved him down onto his seat again.

Everybody on the plane was looking at her crying and screaming. Eventually the engines on the plane turned back on one by one and the power was restored.

Lucy ended her screaming and slumped back into her seat exhausted. She buried her face into Yutaka's stomach and Yutaka could see her tears rolling down his ninja suit.

Lucy was still crying heavily even through her exhaustion and she sniffled continually.

"I'm sorry." Lucy said calmly to Yutaka as she looked up at him.

"Don't worry. I'm always here for you." Yutaka replied.

Lucy gave Yutaka a hug for sticking by her no matter what the consequences were.

"I love you." She whispered lovingly to Yutaka and smiled at him. Yutaka smiled back.

"I love you too." He replied meaningfully.

His expression became more serious as well as the tone of his voice.

"I get so worried about you." He said almost upset by what Lucy did a few minutes ago.

"I'm sorry." Lucy said softly and apologetically for a second time.

The plane was continuing on its journey to Belmont, Florida now the engines were once again in working order.

Lucy fell asleep again with her head rested against Yutaka's shoulder.

Yutaka looked at her as she slept and smiled and hoped Lucy would not endure another outburst.

Fortunately for him she did not as she slept like a baby.

Yutaka looked at her blue dress that she always wears and shook his head because of all the mud stains spread over it.

"Sleeping now, huh?" The Black Mamba clan minion asked. He wore the same ninja suit that Yutaka was wearing.

Yutaka nodded and smiled.

"Name's Hideo by the way. Sorry I never told you before." The minion revealed.

"It's OK. We were in a battle after all." Yutaka said as they were indeed in battle during that fateful night.

Yutaka put his arm around the sleeping Lucy giving her head something to rest against.

Yutaka played back the many things that he and Lucy have been through just as the plane landed gracefully at Belmont International Airport.

Yutaka gasped as he looked out of the window to see numerous glittering skyscrapers forming a perfect backdrop against the huge airport terminal.

Lucy, Yutaka, Hideo, Mia, Louis and Syiren all disembarked the plane and made their way to the arrivals terminal.

"This is huge!" Yutaka exclaimed gasping. Lucy could not believe it either but they could be forgiven for inhabiting a small village in Japan before.

Mia and Louis, Lucy's sister and brother respectively, looked around at the shops and structures, the floristry and the large amount of people within the airport.

Syiren was the only who knew where she was going having been a resident of Belmont since she was born.

"It's this way to the exit." She said helping the others to find their way around.

"There will be a taxi waiting for us." She explained as they neared the carousels to pick up their suitcases.

Lucy found it entertaining to watch as peoples' luggage sporadically entered the airport via the carousels.

Soon enough their own luggage came through. Lucy picked up her bag. It had the fading logo of metal band All That Remains etched onto it and was primarily black in colour.

Yutaka grabbed his own backpack and his suitcase while everyone else retrieved their own belongings.

"I guess you like All That Remains, Lucy, huh?" Syiren asked. Lucy looked at her and nodded.

"Are they still around?" Lucy asked in hope that they were.

"Yes they are still very much an active band." Syiren replied.

They walked past a lone teenage Goth. He had plenty of piercings on his face, had long black hair and wore a black t-shirt with Graveworm written on it. He also wore black jeans with a chain around the waist.

"Awesome, dude!" He exclaimed when he noticed Lucy's bag and further showed his appreciation by gesturing with the devil horns, a hand sign that has become a tradition to metal fans.

Lucy smiled at him as they trudged past him.

"I like this country already." She said to Syiren who smiled warmly at her.

They had finally reached the exit and there was a taxi waiting for them just like Syiren had said.

They all clambered into the taxi, a large MPV or Multi Purpose Vehicle that was convenient given that there were six of them.

Syiren sat in the front next to the driver.

"Where to?" The driver asked in a gruff voice.

"Richardson Street." Syiren replied and before long the taxi left the airport for where Syiren had designated.

Yutaka was once again staring in amazement at the skyscrapers that glistened in the early morning sun.

"Belmont has some of Florida's tallest buildings." Syiren explained when she noticed Yutaka was intrigued by them.

They soon passed by Shaded Gardens, Belmont's large theme park and it was Lucy's turn to be astonished. She looked at the number of large rides that could easily be seen over the park's boundaries. They included a large wooden roller coaster and an even larger steel roller coaster that was at least three hundred feet tall.

"I'll take you there soon if you want." Syiren said as she now noticed Lucy's keen interest in the theme park. Lucy's eyes lit up and she nodded her head vigorously.

The taxi also passed by the beach which had a large number of tourists, holidaymakers and Belmont civilians alike. Some were in the clean blue sea, others were relaxing under parasols and more were sunbathing.

Both Lucy and Yutaka were completely taken by surprise at just how different Belmont is to Kuromokuzai and they smiled at each other as they both thought of the masses of potential fun they could be having in Florida's second largest city.

The sun was in the sky bearing down its rays upon the appreciative city as it sat in a small portion of the cloudless, ultramarine coloured sky.

They arrived at Syiren's apartment block. It was a shabby; graffiti swamped building with many areas of flaking paint. This building was clustered amongst many other old and tired looking buildings that seemed to stick out like a sore thumb in the shadow of Belmont's modern skyscrapers.

"I'm sorry this place leaves a little to be desired in comparison to what you've seen but it's what I call home and will be for the foreseeable future." Syiren explained apologetically.

"It's fine." Yutaka replied although he was a tad disappointed.

Syiren paid the taxi driver who then drove off into the distance, becoming nothing more than a speck on the horizon.

"Shall we go inside? My home is your home for as long as you need." Syiren asked while smiling at the rest.

"Sure." Hideo replied.

They entered the apartment block and a distinct smell of rust and dirt with also a tinge of urine.

"Shit it stinks!" Yutaka exclaimed before Syiren looked at him apologetically.

"Once again I'm sorry about this place. This area of Belmont has been left to rot. There are many derelict and abandoned houses, shops, office blocks and hotels around here." Syiren explained about the old and derelict area the city.

She turned the key to her apartment in the lock and it clicked open.

"Make yourselves comfortable." Syiren said encouraging them to do so.

Lucy and Yutaka sat side by side on the main sofa while Mia and Louis sat the other side of Lucy. Hideo remained standing.

Syiren made her way into the apartment's small kitchen.

"You have to be careful around here sometimes. Especially at night because there are often drug dealers who will pretty much force you to buy a packet of Class A drugs." Syiren explained. Yutaka and Lucy simply shrugged it off given their reputations.

Lucy flicked the television on and immediately turned to the music channels and in particular one where her favourite music heroes appeared performing the song Six.

"Yutaka! All That Remains!" Lucy exclaimed excitedly and proceeded to head bang wildly, her long black hair flinging around manically. She laughed with excitement and the very fact that she was being a metal maniac.

Yutaka, Mia and Louis all laughed as Lucy put on this unexpected show.

"You made her happy again. Thank you." Mia said to Yutaka.

"I'm glad." Yutaka replied with a smile.

Approximately four minutes later Six had ended. Lucy threw her hair back over her face again and sat back down beside Yutaka. Then she rested her head on his shoulder again.

"Did you enjoy that?" Yutaka asked sarcastically.

"Yes." Lucy replied exhausted now.

"There is a school nearby that Lucy, Mia and Louis could attend." Syiren explained to Yutaka and Hideo as she re-entered the lounge.

"Sure we could have a look." Yutaka replied nodding his head in approval.

Syiren nodded back in acknowledgment.

"What now?" She asked as she felt like she could use some fresh air.

"Sure I'm up for a little exploring." Hideo replied as he wanted to get used to his surroundings.

Syiren smiled and politely ushered them outside the apartment door ready to go as the lock on the door then clicked back into place before Syiren took back the key from the lock.

They stepped down the stairs to the apartment block as the same three scents: rust, dirt and urine polluted the air around them once again.

Yutaka held his nose to protect it from the building's foul odours.

At least for him they were back outside soon enough.

He took in a deep breath of fresh air. It felt good.

They made their way down the street where a gang of teenagers were gathered.

"You stink, kid!" One exclaimed with laughter, causing his gang to erupt into fits of laughter too.

Lucy stood in front of them, her long, unkempt hair concealing her face from view once again.

She does not take kindly to strangers who complained or made fun of her odour or hygiene.

"Too scared to show your face, little girl?" Another gang member asked sarcastically as they burst into hysteric laughter once more.

They stopped when they heard the threatening sound of blades clashing. Lucy now heard the Glaive in one hand. It was like a three bladed boomerang or Shuriken.

"We were just kidding. You know that, right?" The first gang member said trying to fool her, though Lucy was having none of it.

The gang ran into the distance as quick as they could.

"If you 'kid' again I will chop off your fucking heads!" Yutaka yelled at them before he looked back at Lucy.

"Are you alright?" He asked her softly. Lucy turned around, looked at Yutaka and although she tried her hardest to force them back, she burst into tears.

Yutaka gave her a hug to comfort her.

"I'm sorry, Lucy, that gang love to stir up trouble around here. They think they're invincible but you proved that they're not. That takes a lot of courage." Syiren explained.

"It's not your fault and Lucy knows that. It hits her harder because she's had to deal with bullies a lot at school." Yutaka explained as he tightened his hug for Lucy to make her feel better. She looked up at him and smiled although tears still fell from her cheeks.

"Shall we go and explore around here now so you can forget about them idiots?" Yutaka asked smiling back. Lucy nodded and they began to walk at a leisurely pace down the street again, passing many derelict and condemned buildings as they did so.

"Wow this area needs redeveloping." Hideo gasped looking at one particular building that looked as if it had caved in on itself. It was the result of a recent fire and the demolishers had very half heartedly knocked fragments of it to the floor.

"I wish the mayor of Belmont and the councillors took this into consideration too, along with attempting to expel crime from here." Syiren continued on Hideo's statement.

They eventually stopped upon gazing at a small school with a rustic yet functional building and a few old but large huts speckled with freshly incorporated windows. A chain link fence darted around the school's circumference. Many children could be seen running about playfully amongst other things.

"This is it, guys." Syiren said as she turned to the others.

Lucy looked at the children playing around, hoping that she to will be accepted by them despite her ultra rare psychic condition.

They made their way through the school's main gate and trudged up to the entrance of the old building and followed signposts in the corridor to the principal's office.

Hideo knocked on the wooden door, the word principal inscribed in gold letters.

"Come in." Came a deep voice partially muffled because of the closed door.

They entered the office that was home to the principal during the day. A man with grey hair and wearing glasses and a smart black business suit sat behind a rich pinewood desk that had a lamp and several sheets of paper perched on top.

"We came to see if these children are entitled to become pupils here." Syiren began.

"I don't see why not. Please do introduce them however so I can become better acquainted with them." The principal replied quickly.

"This is Mia and she is eleven years old." Syiren explained as she put her hand on Mia's shoulder. Mia nodded.

"Here is Louis who is five years of age." Syiren continued as she picked Louis up, making him giggle.

"And this here is nine year old Lucy." Syiren concluded as she tapped Lucy's shoulder. Lucy nodded although her dark and messy hair covered up most of her face.

"OK just one more thing. Could I possibly get a look at the birth certificates?" The principal asked with a serious tone in his voice.

"Lucky me. I have them on me." Yutaka replied chuckling as he fished them out of his backpack and lay them down on the principal's desk.

"By the way, what name do you go by here?" Yutaka asked the principal.

"Principal Blackwood." He replied instantly as he began to look at the birth certificates.

Yutaka nodded in understanding. Principal Blackwood continued to look through the certificates and Lucy's in particular.

"Interesting." He muttered to himself as his eyes scanned through it once more.

It read:

Name: Lucy Colvin-Carrington.

Date of Birth: 14th February 1999.

Place of Birth: Kuromokuzai, Hyogo, Japan.

Parents: Francine Carrington, Nick Colvin.

Principal Blackwood looked up at Lucy.

"Could you pull your hair away from your face?" He asked. Lucy nodded and brushed her hair away from her face with her hand.

"Oh my god." Principal Blackwood gasped.

"What is it?" Syiren asked.

"You're the girl who was missing for over three years. I followed all the news reports and begged for her to be found. When she was reported to have been found a few days ago, my long local campaign to make people aware was done and I breathed a huge sigh of relief." Principal Blackwood explained.

"I see. I'm glad there were people elsewhere who were concerned about Lucy." Yutaka said gratefully.

"You have a rare psychic condition. Correct?" Principal Blackwood asked as he turned to Lucy. Lucy nodded.

"Your parents are deceased. Correct?" He asked her. Lucy nodded again.

"Finally, were you abused at home or bullied at school?" He asked as he looked at Lucy's scars.

"Both. I was bullied at school for my condition and my taste in music. I don't want to talk about my home abuse." Lucy replied as tears formed in her eyes.

"OK I understand. If there is anybody who causes you a problem here at Belmont Elementary then come and see me and I will deal with it immediately, OK." Principal Blackwood explained. Lucy nodded again.

"In the meantime I recommend you purchase the school uniform for each of them and I would like them to begin next week." Principal Blackwood explained.

"OK thank you." Is there anything else?" Syiren asked.

"No not at this time. Call me if you need any assistance." Principal Blackwood instructed as he handed a card with the school phone number written messily onto it. Yutaka took it from the desk and smiled as he put the birth certificates safely into his backpack once again.

They bid farewell to Principal Blackwood for now and walked triumphantly to the school exit.

It was getting dark as they were all winding down in Syiren's apartment as they prepared to spend their first night in Belmont, except for Syiren of course who has lived here all her life.

Lucy was lying down on the floor drawing various buildings, Yutaka sat and watched the television from the sofa along with Hideo and Mia, Louis was fast asleep in bed and Syiren was in the kitchen washing the dishes.

"I think you need some sleep now, you two." Yutaka said to Lucy and Mia, hinting that they need to go to bed now.

Lucy got up and hugged Yutaka tightly.

"Goodnight." She whispered to him and smiled deeply.

"Goodnight, Lucy. Sweet dreams." He replied smiling also as Lucy trudged off into one of the two bedrooms whereupon she clambered into bed. Mia soon followed suit.

Lucy remained quiet as both Syiren and Hideo bid her and Mia goodnight. Before Mia even said a word to her, she fell into a dreamland.

She reawakened from a nightmare featuring her deceased family members to hear a loud but brief sound fade into the clear, dark night sky. She went to her window to investigate and became wide eyed with shock by what she saw.

A teenage male gangster was lying motionless on the ground, blood spurting profusely from a large circular hole in his temple. Many spatters of blood lay on the ground surrounding the dead teenager as well as on his lucrative clothing.

Lucy also noticed his murderer as he stood proudly over the dead body sporting a small pistol in his right hand.

"This is what happens when you fuck with the Invincibles!" The murdering gang member exclaimed.

Lucy recognised him and before she knew it she was heading out of the apartment with her Glaive in hand.

The murderer was talking face to face with his friend near to his victim.

"Had to be done, man. Had to be done." He sighed.

He noticed a figure dart behind his friend in the near distance. He could only make out that the figure was fairly small and had long, dark hair before it disappeared into the shadows.

"I have to check something out, cover me in case something goes wrong, man." The gang member instructed his friend.

"Why?" His friend asked plainly.

"Stop asking stupid fucking questions and just do it." He ordered harshly. His friend obeyed and took cover behind a large pillar holding part of a derelict building.

The murdering gang member began to look intensely into the dark shadows in front of him.

"Come out you fucking moron." He taunted angrily. A cat popped out from the shadows, making him jolt and nearly shooting it in the process. The murderer breathed a sigh of relief as the black cat ran off.

He turned back to look at the shadows and quivered in fear as a pale female face came into view. It belonged to that of a little girl. That namely being Lucy. A dark smile had crossed her face.

The murderer turned around to say something to his friend but didn't make a sound, such was his fear. This was fatal.

Lucy emerged from the shadows while he still had his back turned. Then she slotted the sharp blade of her Glaive hard onto his stomach. Then she viciously cut across it. It made a very deep slash across his torso, where blood began to heavily spurt out.

Soon enough his entrails made an unwelcome appearance as they began to hang out of his torso while blood was squirting all the while.

Then the intestines began to spill out of his wound and landed in the pool of deep crimson on the floor.

Lucy disappeared back in the shadows giggling harshly as his friend finally noticed what had happened.

The murderer had been murdered as he slowly fell to the floor on his torso. His friend looked fit to throw up as he could hear the blood seeping horribly out of the wound, making the already large crimson pool of blood and intestines even bigger.

His friend had tears forming in his eyes.

"Oh my god, Charlie. I feel shit, man I didn't watch your back when I needed to. Rest in peace, man." He said with a sad tone of voice and looking at Charlie's dead body.

Then he was suddenly attacked from behind as Lucy somehow curled her leg around his to trip him up. He crashed to the ground and got back to his knees. Lucy recognised who he was too.

"Please don't do this to me I beg of you." He pleaded but it was no good.

"I can't have witnesses." Lucy whispered harshly as she inserted the blade of her Glaive hard against his throat. She then slowly ran it across to the area beneath his left ear.

Lucy's intended victim could not only feel the cold blade of the Glaive against his skin but also the cold thrill of fear making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle as it slowly sank in that he was not going to escape with his life.

Indeed he didn't as Lucy maliciously sliced right across his throat, creating a deep slit that began below his left ear and ended below his right ear.

Blood sprayed like a fountain from the wound, showering the floor in red and crimson.

Lucy watched as the limp and lifeless body fell to the floor still bleeding excessively.

She shook some of the blood off of her Glaive and then inexplicably fell to the floor, eyes firmly shut.


	2. Next Day

**Next Day:**

Lucy opened her eyes. Everything in her mind seemed like a blur. She looked around to see that she was tucked up comfortably in bed. The very same bed that she remembered falling asleep in. Was the venture into the streets just a dream? For now she did not know. She was still tired and found it hard to sit up.

When she did so, Lucy looked to her right to see that her Glaive's blades were sparkling and spotlessly clean.

She scratched the top of her head to free it of an irritating itch and hopped effortlessly from her bed.

She stumbled into the lounge clumsily from tiredness and fell to the floor as a result.

Yutaka and Hideo noticed this and laughed amongst themselves. Lucy's watchful red eyes were drawn to them both as they very poorly tried to keep their laughter a secret from her.

Lucy crawled slowly along the floor, feeling too tired to get up again. She continued to do so until she was in front of Yutaka who was sitting on the sofa.

Lucy slowly got to her feet and immediately collapsed into Yutaka's arms seeing as he knew what Lucy was going to do.

"Tired?" Yutaka asked already knowing the answer.

"Yeah." Lucy replied weakly as the result of her tiredness.

Yutaka and Hideo were watching the television and in particular the news channel. The reporter had this to say:

"We are at the scene of three grisly murders that all occurred within a very short space of time in the early hours of this morning. Terrance Donovan was found shot dead with a bullet in his head, George Bailey was found with his throat cut from ear to ear and the most grisly murder occurred to Charlie Anderson who was brutally disembowelled. It looks like he was the killer of Donovan as he was clutching a pistol when he was found. All three had rivers of blood snaking along the ground. Their parents have been notified by police and are said to be in deep shock."

Lucy blanked the report as she seemed to not know the plight of the three victims and their downfalls.

"There is always a sick killer in every place." Hideo sighed as he downed the rest of his energy drink.

"Damn right. Belmont has had a few notorious criminals in recent times but this ranks up with the worst of them. There is obviously a sick and twisted individual around here." Syiren explained as she snuck up on Yutaka, Hideo and Lucy with her facial expression clouded.

"Indeed." Yutaka sighed plainly.

"Are you OK, Lucy?" Syiren asked before Lucy decided to raise her head and her demon like red eyes were fixed to Syiren. Lucy nodded and rested her head on Yutaka's shoulder again.

An interview was taking place on the very same news report and they all quietened down to hear what the gang member had to say for himself:

"They will be sorely missed, especially by me, but this will make us stronger, physically and emotionally. We are the Invincibles and we will roll forever, baby. Yeah."

Lucy looked at the gang member on the television and for some reason stored the image in her brain. Even she could not work out why.

An image of Lucy when she was impaled on the metal pole in a picturesque park flashed through Yutaka's mind before it faded quickly away into a memory after a brief second.

Yutaka clutched his head wondering why that had just happened. He eventually convinced himself that it was Lucy's own very powerful mind mixed with a healthy dose of her psychic phenomenon and that Lucy was trying to tell him something that did not attract the "unwanted" attention of the others.

"Are you sure you're OK, Lucy?" Yutaka asked her as he was a little worried.

Lucy nodded her head again.

"I can link with your mind." She whispered to Yutaka.

Yutaka was concerned still though as the image seemed sudden or even random.

"Is there something else you wish to tell me?" Yutaka asked as he was still concerned about it.

Lucy looked Yutaka seriously in the eye and spoke through telepathy to him:

"I want you to remember what happened to me. Make sure it does not happen again." Her voice said in Yutaka's head.

"I understand." Yutaka replied as he felt weird through Lucy's sudden telepathy. Her voice seemed to echo through his head innumerable times.

"I want you to love me forever." Lucy's voice said repeatedly in his head while echoing sharply.

"Don't worry, I will." Yutaka replied as he wrapped his arms around her again to try and prove his point.

It worked convincingly enough, for Lucy hugged him back.

Yutaka remained concerned however despite this. To him it seemed like Lucy's scarred past was something her mind would not get rid of or even just simply let go, bitter thoughts seem to evoke in her mind all the time, wishing the world would be a better place.

"Lucy, do you want some breakfast?" Syiren asked from the kitchen. Lucy cleared her throat as her voice was croaky.

"Cereal please." She replied once she had indeed cleared out her throat.

Lucy rose to her feet again and wandered into the kitchen to assist in pouring her cereal.

Mia had risen from her slumber and trudged into the lounge, all the while rubbing her eyes.

"I think we'll sort the school uniforms out today." Yutaka announced when he turned to Syiren, Lucy and Mia.

Lucy looked at him and nodded her head, Mia still was not properly awake and Syiren nodded while making tea for herself, Hideo and Yutaka.

"Thank you." Yutaka said as Syiren handed him his cup of tea.

"So, Yutaka, we know a lot about Lucy, but what about yourself?" She asked him. Yutaka had a serious expression on his face. He looked at Syiren and began with:

"I was born in Kuromokuzai on December 24th 1984 which makes me twenty three as of now. Itachi Keiji and Mio Kishida happen to be my parents and they got married two years afterwards but my mother was killed by a doctor who seemed to have a conscience when he removed her life support machine after she was injured in an earthquake that struck Kuromokuzai seven years ago. My father hunted him down and chopped off his head with the Dragon Sword which I received as a Christmas present later in the same year. Anyway, my parents brought me up strictly and when I became a teenager I started work in a local pawn shop and when I reached fifteen I began sparring as training for the then newly formed Golden Dragon ninja clan. I passed with flying colours. It was at my seventeenth Christmas that I received the Dragon Sword as a gift from my father. I combined my routine job at the pawn shop with being a highly trained ninja assassin. I did simple missions at first before the Black Mamba clan began to bother us. We warred for years…..excuse me." Yutaka explained before finishing abruptly without conclusion.

Yutaka wandered into the bathroom. He splashed water on his face and then put a silver earring into the lobe of his left ear. He finished by applying silver bars to his other piercing located on the outer edge of his left eyebrow.

He then brought out the photo of him and his father, the same one he gazed at on the plane ride here.

"Father, why did it have to be this way?" He asked towards the heavens as he clasped his hand over the picture to block it from his vision.

He stuffed the photo back in his ninja suit's deepest pocket and turned around. He almost screamed in shock as Lucy stood there, her red eyes gazing into his own and her messy hair covering part of her face.

"What are you doing?" Yutaka asked as he clasped his chest to regulate his breathing again.

"I need to go to the toilet." Lucy replied bluntly as she did a vague impression of wetting herself. Yutaka chuckled.

"I'll just leave you to it then." Yutaka said grinning as he closed the door behind him. Lucy just smiled to herself as she used the toilet.

"What was up, Yutaka?" Hideo asked, still puzzled over Yutaka's sudden conclusion to his life story.

"Nothing." Yutaka lied, masking it behind a vague smile.

Everybody just went silent with no explanation while scratching their heads and wondering what to say.

The sound of the toilet flushing broke the silence and Lucy emerged from the bathroom.

"Shall we go and sort the uniforms out then?" Yutaka asked with a wry smile.

The rest all nodded in reply and they hastily set out for the local clothing store.

Two hours later, they returned with numerous shopping bags that were crammed with clothing. They all seemed individually pleased with themselves.

Lucy marched on into her bedroom with her clothing tucked into her folding arms. This was the happiest she had been in many a year.

She neatly placed them on her bed and went over to the window. It was open. A gang were gathered outside, all hunched against a building across the road.

One noticed Lucy and pointed at her as he grabbed his friends' attention.

"What the fuck are you looking at, kid? You got a staring problem?" He asked sarcastically as his friends hooted and hollered in delight. Lucy did nothing and seemed to be unaffected by them making fun of her.

"Look somewhere else, you ugly fucker!" He called up to her harshly. A tear emerged from her eye and glistened in the sunlight as it fell from her pale cheek and onto the plant that decorated her window ledge. She then wiped her eyes with her forearm to free the tears. Then her mind seemingly told her that it was the same teenager that appeared on the television.

This put a big black mark on what was so far a great day in the nine year olds life.

Four hours later, Lucy tucked herself into bed. It was dark outside; with only the streetlamps illuminating the otherwise darkened streets.

Lucy was still upset about that earlier incident and wished her mind would forget about it.

Even through these thoughts, Lucy departed to slumber land. Mia came in and smiled when she saw Lucy sleeping as she herself readied herself for bed…..

Lucy woke up again. Mia was asleep cuddling her favourite toy. Lucy smiled at her, though not a kind and thoughtful smile. She slipped out of bed and looked out of the window. On the dark street below, a lone gang member stood on the opposite side of the road, smoking a cigarette and using his mobile phone to interact with a friend.

Lucy headed out of the apartment and down the stairs, Glaive in hand.

"Yeah, yeah. I'll meet up with you in fifteen minutes, man…yeah, I'll bring my gun just in case." The gang member said as he continued speaking over his phone.

He caught a glimpse of a darkened figure sneak along the road in front of him.

He followed where he thought the figure had disappeared to. He stopped to look around. Little did he know, the figure, identified as Lucy, stood in the shadows behind him.

"Where the fuck are you? Come out I dare you!" He asked into the night as he ended the call on his phone and slipped it into his pocket.

"I'm right here." Lucy replied in a devilish little girl's voice and while giggling in a dark tone.

He swivelled round and almost fainted as his fears came true. Lucy stood in front of him, her hair covering her face and her dark blue dress swaying in the breeze. She held her Glaive tightly in her right hand.

The gang member did not know what to do; his mind froze in fear and the hairs on his neck prickling on end.

He turned around, fatally, as Lucy grabbed him from behind with one hand and began to stab him in the back repeatedly with her Glaive, blood spurting every time she removed her Glaive from a freshly created wound.

Lucy continued to cut into his back deeper and deeper until she sliced cleanly through something hard, like bone.

The gang member's battered body flopped to the floor. He tried to move his hands and arms to no avail, getting nothing but spasms. He could not move his head either for exactly the same reason.

"Help me." He called weakly. Nobody was around except for him and Lucy.

The lower part of his cut vertebrae began to tear through muscle and arterial tissue in his back and continued to do so until it pierced through his skin. Lucy could now see that particular part of his spine poking out from his back, soaked in crimson blood. More blood sprayed out like a fountain from that wound, sprinkling the nearby wall and showering the floor in dark red blood.

"Please somebody." The gang member croaked, too weak to talk normally now.

Lucy knelt down in front of his head and yanked it upwards, making the neck bone click as she did so. This was so he would get a good look at her face.

"You are, the ugly bitch……..aren't you." He croaked again now almost lifeless.

"I do not appreciate that." Lucy maliciously remarked as her face was almost pressed against his.

She finished him off by stabbing her Glaive through the back of his head and pierced it all the way through his skull and brain and out of his mouth.

His body finally went lifeless as she withdrew the Glaive from his head. More blood exited his mouth and pooled on the floor. Lucy finally afforded herself a dark smile.

She jolted when the lifeless gang member's phone began to ring. She smiled and ignored it and trotted back towards the apartment while shaking the blood off her Glaive. Just as she got to the door to the complex, she passed out again and lay unconscious on the floor.


	3. School Days

**School Days:**

Lucy woke up with her head spinning inside. The past week had been a blur. Today is her first day in an American school and she hoped that the students there would take to her better than the ones she left behind at Kuromokuzai.

She went into the bathroom to get herself ready for the big day; this was before anybody else had even awakened from their slumber. Lucy looked at herself in the mirror to see her own messy frame. Her hair that extends to her waist is stringy and greasy and the scars that dominate her arms and legs are a complete eyesore.

"What if…?" Lucy began to ask herself before cutting off as she wondered about how people would accept her demon like red eyes.

Lucy splashed water onto her face to keep her tired eyes open and to refresh herself. She looked into the mirror again to wonder how she would be accepted by fellow students at Belmont Elementary based on her looks. As she looked into the mirror, something did not seem right. Her reflection looked back at her wearing a dark smile. Lucy was not smiling. She felt like screaming, but her mind told her not to.

Lucy put on her school uniform, a smart white t-shirt with buttons on the collar complete with a diagonal striped black and maroon coloured tie tucked under the collar to her hip.

She also wore a black jacket with Belmont Elementary's logo, depicting the beach and sea, a lighthouse and seagulls, emblazoned on the left side of the chest area.

Lucy was also wearing traditional smart black school trousers, white socks and black Velcro shoes.

Lucy looked in the mirror again, now it was showing her proper reflection and her facial expression screwed up when she looked at her hair, all stringy and greasy against the smart outlook of her clothing.

"I'm not tying my hair back." She muttered to herself and neglected to look at the mirror again.

Lucy proceeded to the kitchen to make her breakfast, retrieved a bowl from the large cupboard beside it and the cereal from a smaller cupboard beside it. After she had finished preparing it and fished a spoon from the cutlery draw, Lucy went on into the lounge and sat down on the floor beside the television. She began to hungrily consume it and wiped her mouth on her arm once she had finished about five minutes later.

By now, the rest of the apartment had come back from dreamland. Yutaka and Mia both emerged from their bedrooms.

"Lucy?" Yutaka asked bluntly.

"I'm ready for school!" Lucy replied with a smile.

Yutaka was amazed at Lucy getting ready before the rest had even got up.

Mia emerged from the bathroom wearing identical clothing to Lucy although unlike Lucy, her hair was as tidy as her clothing.

Yutaka wore a tuxedo with a white mask over his head and face to conceal his identity.

Hideo and Mia helped Louis get sorted for school and he wore very similar clothing to Lucy and Mia, albeit in a smaller size.

"We seem to be keen on school today." Hideo said as he came out of his bedroom wearing his Black Mamba clan ninja suit still. Lucy and Mia smiled at him as they stood next to each other.

Syiren was the last to emerge from her bedroom, wearing her red encrusted black dragon t-shirt and camouflage trousers.

"Looks like we're all set." Yutaka declared. Lucy and Mia smiled excitedly and laughed as they exited the apartment again followed by the rest.

They ran noisily down the steps and onto the pavement outside the musty apartment complex. When the others joined up with them, they trudged slowly but excitedly in Belmont Elementary's direction.

When they reached the crossing of the road, Lucy's smile evaporated when she saw a baby crawl down an alleyway. It looked just like her doll that she called Alissa.

After she noticed this, a giggle echoed inside her head. It was her own laughter, but Lucy was not laughing.

Lucy's excitement had diminished completely, replaced by an aura of fear.

Mia looked at her.

"What's wrong, Lucy?" She asked with sudden concern.

Lucy stood there silently for a moment. Then she looked Mia in the eye and spoke softly.

"Nothing." Lucy lied. Mia thought it was weird but thought it was best not to quiz her sister over it.

After they had crossed the road they headed in the direction of the school, now visible in the distance to the right of them.

"There it is!" Mia exclaimed in anticipation. Louis pointed at it as Yutaka carried him in his arms.

They had finally reached the school gates a whole five minutes later. The sky was still in its early morning stage with the low sun, orange clouds and bright blue sky. Many students bid farewell to their parents outside the gates until later.

A sudden flush of nervousness coursed through Lucy and quickly boiled to a head as she looked at the school that would house her for the next six and a half hours, her dark, messy hair swayed gently in the morning breeze.

"Come on, Lucy!" Mia exclaimed from the staircase into the building as she waited.

Lucy turned around and hugged Yutaka tightly.

"I love you." She whispered quietly to him with a soft smile.

Yutaka smiled back.

"I love you too." He whispered back to her.

"It's time. I'll see you later." He continued.

Lucy let go of the hug and pecked Yutaka on the cheek before facing the school again. She turned around once more.

"Bye." She said to Yutaka and waved to him, Hideo and Syiren.

Yutaka rubbed his cheek with a smile, knowing how solid his and Lucy's connection with each other had grown.

Lucy faced the school again. It seemed daunting to her after so many years. She did not want to make Mia and Louis wait any longer though and finally walked up the steps to rejoin them.

They all waved Yutaka, Hideo and Syiren goodbye before they headed inside.

The corridor was crammed with children of various ages doing various things. Some were running around chasing each other, others were looking in their lockers or talking to each other in groups. The only similarity between them all was the uniform.

"So you must be the Colvin-Carrington siblings." A voice bellowed from behind Lucy, Mia and Louis, making them jolt when he began.

The three of them turned around to see a tall, short brown haired man wearing a grey business suit glaring at each of them simultaneously.

Mia stepped forward.

"Yes we are." She replied with a smile.

"Right you are, come with me." The man instructed. The three of them followed him down the corridor. Lucy was getting some odd looks from a number of students, most presumably due to the length of her hair or her red eyes she thought.

The man stopped outside a classroom door and looked at Louis.

"This is your class." He stated with a smile and an outstretched arm opening the door for young Louis.

"Goodbye, little bro! See you later!" Mia said excitedly as she waved at Louis who had by now entered his class's room that was filled with four or five year old children. Lucy looked at the children with a soft smile and waved at Louis who had in turn waved back.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, girls." The man apologised.

"It's not a problem, Mister er….." Mia replied before she got stumped. The man chuckled.

"I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself did I. I am Mr White and I'm a supply teacher here at Belmont Elementary." The man explained with a resigned yet friendly smile.

"It's OK, sir." Mia replied while smiling back.

Mr White chuckled again and brushed the dust off his suit with his right hand.

They stopped outside a much larger classroom filled with rowdy eleven year olds.

"This is your class." Mr White explained to Mia. She smiled.

"I'll speak to you in a bit, Lucy." Mia said as she gave Lucy a quick hug. Lucy nodded although she was nervous about knowing nobody in her class.

Mia entered her classroom to be introduced to her new class by the young female teacher. Lucy watched by the doorway for a brief moment.

"It's time for you to see your new class." Mr White explained to Lucy. Lucy looked at him and nodded nervously as they trudged onwards down the large corridor. It was past nine o' clock, the time that lessons are meant to begin.

Mr White stopped at a third classroom and knocked at the door. A young female voice could be heard.

"Come in." She said with a warm smile.

"This is Mrs Lambert, your new tutor." Mr White explained to Lucy before she nodded. Mr White approached Mrs Lambert.

"This here is your new student, Lucy Colvin-Carrington." He explained. Mrs Lambert nodded in understanding.

"I'll leave you to it." Mr White said as he let himself out, closing the door as he did so.

Lucy was standing next to Mrs Lambert and facing her new class and filled with nervous thoughts. What if? Kind of thoughts, such as what if I'm a freak to them and what if they dislike me? All will be revealed soon enough to her.

Some of the class looked up at Lucy, presumably puzzled as their eyes gazed her up and down. Other students were concentrating on their work and thus had their heads down, completely oblivious to Lucy's presence.

Lucy meanwhile was looking around the room, the walls were littered in the students' work, the windows pointed upon the main school field and many desks, holding one student each along with the teacher's larger desk perched atop a bright blue carpet. There was also a whiteboard behind the teacher's desk on the wall smothered with various mathematical equations written via a red marker pen.

Lucy saw only one desk remained unused among the thirty three other desks occupied by a student. She knew this desk would be her desk.

"OK, class may I have your attention for a few minutes." Mrs Lambert began, clapping her hands loudly to get every student's attention within the room. The students not looking up already did so without any delay.

"Thank you. You may be wondering what is going on and who this is. Well, I'll tell you……" She continued before being rudely interrupted by a blonde haired boy wearing glasses over his blue eyes at the back of the class.

"Get to the point already, I want to get on with my work." He groaned unsympathetically.

"Matthew, shut up! You can carry on when I've finished. As I was saying, you may be wondering who this is. Her name is Lucy Colvin-Carrington and this is her first day at Belmont Elementary so please make her feel welcome." Mrs Lambert finally explained.

She handed Lucy four sheets of plain A4 paper.

"We're sketching our favourite musical artists today." Mrs Lambert explained softly to Lucy. Lucy looked at her and nodded.

She turned back towards the class and finally was able to walk to her desk.

Lucy did so quickly and she felt relief on her legs when she sat down on the grey plastic chair behind her desk as they felt like boulders for a while.

Lucy put the paper atop her desk once it felt less weird to her being among a large number of other children and took out her pencil case from her bag, her favourite bag, her All That Remains bag which she then placed underneath her desk.

She looked behind her, two rows back to see Matthew was giving her a dirty look.

Lucy just shunned it by ignoring him from now on so it does not affect her emotions, given how sensitive she is.

Lucy turned her attention to the girl sitting to the left of her. This girl had brown hair that lengthened to her upper torso and like Lucy and every other girl in the school wore the same school uniform. She was giving Lucy an odd look but shuddered and shied away when Lucy's red eyes fell upon her.

Lucy simply shook her head in partial disgust as she sat back on her chair and began to put pencil to paper and draw.

She began to receive even more weird looks from the students around her when they saw what she was drawing.

Lucy had drawn a detailed depiction of the All That Remains logo along the top, having her sheet of paper in a landscape stance, and one by one the five members showed up on this sheet of paper directly from her handiwork. They were all beside their instruments and microphones and Lucy had drawn them as if they were performing a song at a gig.

She was the third student to complete her artwork in the class.

As instructed by Mrs Lambert, Lucy rose from her chair and proceeded to the front of the class, handing it to her teacher when she did so.

"Thank you, Lucy." Mrs Lambert said as she put it on the top of the drawings that perched on her desk.

Lucy looked at her and gave off a light hearted smile.

While she did this and when she walked back to her desk, she garnered more strange looks from the same students.

Lucy ignored them but deep inside she was becoming mildly annoyed because it felt as if she was a zoo animal for all the children to stop and stare at.

Lucy sat back down on the chair at her desk and waited for the students who had not finished drawing to do exactly that. While she waited, she rested her head on her desk, which was not exactly the same comfortable feeling she gets from Yutaka's shoulder, but it would do for now.

Lucy had to wait a full, slow going ten minutes before all the students had completed their artwork and handed them to the teacher.

Mrs Lambert then, one by one, held a drawing aloft above her head and the student that was responsible for the artwork would in turn raise their hand.

Eventually the teacher came down to Lucy's artwork, funnily enough it was the last to be shown. Lucy's drawing appeared to be far more detailed than everything that had come before it.

"All That Remains. That must be yours, Lucy." Mrs Lambert remarked as she held it in the air above her head.

Lucy nodded at her in agreement, allowing herself a wry smile, though most of the students around Lucy gave her more strange looks. This was annoying Lucy more and more inside, particularly the girl sitting to the left of her.

"Who are All That Remains, Lucy?" Mrs Lambert asked with every student's eyes glaring at Lucy.

Lucy took out The Fall of Ideals, the latest album the band had done and the one that Syiren had bought for her only two days before.

Conveniently there was a stereo perched on a window ledge near the back of the class.

Lucy opened the CD compartment of the stereo and calmly slipped the disk in. As usual, the same students stared at her like she was an alien.

Despite this, Lucy was not deterred and with a tap of the play button, she revelled in the most explosive introduction that Belmont Elementary had ever known.

Once Six had began, Lucy went berserk, as if she forgot who she herself was.

Lucy began by head banging, throwing her long, unkempt hair about uncontrollably to much eyeballing and shock from her fellow class students.

She then added screaming out the lyrics to the mix in a surprisingly almost faithful interpretation of the vocals being ground out in the actual song itself.

Eventually as the song went on, Lucy sat down on her desk, head banging wildly, singing/screaming the lyrics and gesturing the devil horn hand signature.

The class then realised that this was the beginning of her very own signature move, as she stood proudly on her desk still flinging and flailing wildly to the music, completely forgetting where she actually is. She even managed a maniacal laugh.

As all good things do, the song finally drew to a close. Lucy froze on the spot, receiving rapturous applauds from most of the class and the teacher, barring only the usual suspects.

Lucy's face came over in a flush of red in sheer embarrassment. She retrieved the CD from the stereo and put it back in its case and slipping it back into her bag.

It would most probably be the talking point of the day among the other students, no doubt with a variety of opinions.

Lucy sat back down on her desk's chair and buried her face into the desk, spreading her stringy hair across the desk in such a way that it completely concealed her embarrassed face from the class.

It certainly created a buzz within the class however and that secretly pleased Lucy deep inside.

"OK, class it is break time. Please calm down when you come back later." Mrs Lambert announced.

Lucy's head rose from the desk slowly and cleared her hair away from her face with her hand. The class were pushing each other out of the door playfully in their boisterous mood.

Lucy was still perched on the chair at her desk and Mrs Lambert looked at her.

"I'm sorry the class is so noisy today." Mrs Lambert said apologetically.

"It's OK." Lucy replied in her deep little girl's voice, speaking her first words since she arrived at Belmont Elementary.

"Lucy, is it OK if I ask you something?" Mrs Lambert asked unsure of whether to do so as she crouched down to Lucy's height.

"Yeah." Lucy replied hesitantly, as if she to was unsure, again brushing her dark hair away from her face with her hand.

"OK. Please don't take it personally. All I want to know is, are you the little girl that went missing for many years?" Mrs Lambert asked softly but nervously, not wanting to offend Lucy.

Lucy nodded as her red eyes looked the teacher in the eye, neglecting the need to speak.

Lucy got up and made for the door with her back turned to Mrs Lambert, her All That Remains backpack hoisted to her shoulder.

"I'm glad you're OK." Mrs Lambert said calmly with a smile.

Lucy looked back at her momentarily without smiling before she walked out of the classroom door, leaving Mrs Lambert alone to lock the door.

"Hey, Lucy!" Mia called out to Lucy. Lucy turned around to see the unmistakable curled blonde hair of her older sister. Mia had two people, one on either side of her, with her.

"You have friends already?" Lucy asked her quietly.

"Yeah, my class is great." Mia answered instantly.

Lucy looked down at her shoes. She felt hurt that her school hoodoo is continuing from her Kuromokuzai days.

"What's the matter, Lucy?" Mia asked gently, getting Lucy to look at her.

Lucy looked upset as she faced her sister.

"I hate school." Lucy replied faintly.

"Oh come on, Lucy. Don't worry, you'll be fine." Mia said, trying to encourage Lucy while stroking Lucy's messy hair repeatedly with her left hand to further try and calm Lucy down.

"Nobody ever likes me." Lucy remarked, sounding as if she was harshly criticising herself. This caused her eyes to overflow with tears as they began to crawl down her pale cheeks.

"Lucy please don't cry. You'll be OK." Mia said trying to convince her upset sister otherwise.

Mia turned to her friends, one a blonde haired male and the other a girl with dark brown hair.

"Could I meet you in the cafeteria in five minutes? I need to have a bit of privacy with my sister." Mia asked and explained.

"Sure. It's fine." The boy replied before they made their way to the cafeteria a long way across the main school building.

The two sisters shared a hug in the corridor, embracing it tightly in each other's arms.

"Lucy, just believe in yourself." Mia advised her gently.

"It's difficult for me." Lucy replied plainly.

"I know. I know, but the more confidence you instil in yourself, the better." Mia encouraged her gently still.

They turned ninety degrees as they hugged and Lucy looked with horror to see her mother Francine in the doorway that forms the corridor's primary exit.

"One more chance, Lucy." She whispered and as Lucy blinked, Francine vanished.

Mia noticed Lucy's wide eyed shock.

"Lucy, why are you scared?" She asked, genuinely concerned for her sister while she began to shake, frightened in that concern.

Lucy screamed and shoved Mia aside and began to run down the corridor.

She passed many students on the way, before a stray foot knocked Lucy off her own feet and land with a thud on her stomach. This knocked the air out of Lucy, winding her temporarily.

Lucy regained her senses and sat up on the corridor's pale yellow carpet to be greeted by a trio of giggling girls. One of them sat next to Lucy in class. The one with the long brown hair that extended to her upper torso.

"Did I do that?" She asked herself and her friends with a giggle.

Lucy looked up at her with anger building inside herself, though she left it for now.

"Maybe you should watch where you're going." The girl giggled again as she looked back at Lucy alongside her two friends, both female. One had long blonde hair and the other had even longer jet black hair.

"Let's leave her here, Emily and contemplate on who we should annoy next." The blonde haired girl chirped, still with a giggle.

Lucy noted Emily's name just as Emily and her friends had drifted off down the corridor.

Lucy brushed herself off and got back to her feet again.

As she turned to face the corridor's other main exit, she was greeted with the sight of her father Nick.

"One more chance, Lucy." He whispered, echoing what Francine had said only a few minutes ago.

Lucy was once again wide eyed with shock and fell back onto her backside again. She slid back across the carpet until she backed into a table. By now Nick had disappeared. Lucy just sat there and continued to cry into her hands.

"Lucy!" Mia exclaimed when she found Lucy in the corner of the corridor, backed against a table.

Lucy removed her hands from her face and looked at Mia with tears pouring down her cheeks.

"What is the matter, little sis?" Mia asked Lucy again.

"I saw mommy and daddy." Lucy replied with an upset tone in her voice.

Mia stood back in shock.

"How could you? They're dead." Mia asked while also stating the obvious.

"I……I don't know." Lucy lied, stuttering as she sniffled from her crying.

The school bell rang loud and clear, signalling the start of the next lesson.

"Oh, I'll see you later, Lucy." Mia said, wandering off moments later.

Lucy looked at her timetable to see Physical Education was her next lesson, which she was exempted from for this week. She headed to the changing rooms regardless.

When she got there, she waited outside the girls' changing room just as the teacher arrived.

"You must be the new girl." She said to Lucy who stood with her back against the wall.

Lucy simply nodded and looked at her.

"I am Miss Taylor; please remind me who you are." The teacher said with a light smile.

"Lucy Colvin-Carrington." Lucy replied instantly.

"OK, Lucy could you carry these cones to the sports field and place your bag in the rack?" Miss Taylor instructed as if she was asking a question.

Lucy nodded again and held her hands out to embrace the cones that were politely placed in them by the teacher, who in turn placed Lucy's tattered backpack in the nearby bag rack.

Lucy headed outside the building, wandering towards the sports field with the cones in hand, balancing them within her arms and against her chest. They were moderately heavy.

When she eventually got there, she set down the cones on top of the moist grass. It had been raining during the first lesson and it turned the field into a slip worthy mud bath.

Every time Lucy took a step, the moist soil and grass squelched under her formerly shiny school shoes.

After another ten minutes, the teacher and the rest of Lucy's class emerged from the changing rooms.

Miss Taylor looked in Lucy's direction.

"Thank you, Lucy." She said, appreciating Lucy's help with the cones and began setting them out according to her lesson plans. Lucy bowed her head quickly in acknowledgment.

"What a freak!" Emily yelled as she and her two friends began snorting with laughter along with Matthew.

"Leave her alone." A small boy retorted, his head topped with a very small amount of brown hair, thus making him a skinhead.

"Thank you, Joseph I was just about to say that." Miss Taylor grinned at the small boy.

After explaining the lesson plan involving much running and requiring high amounts of stamina, the girls, each wearing a white t-shirt and an assortment of navy blue or black tracksuit trousers, began the running lesson, part of the track marked out by cones.

Soon after, the boys, each wearing similar white t-shirts and black shorts, took to the same track, with each student jogging around it, some competitively, some not so.

Lucy watched on from the sidelines next to the teacher, still in her school uniform of course.

As Joseph jogged past, Lucy looked at him and gave him a warm smile, as if to say thanks. Joseph smiled back at her.

"So, Lucy, where did you move from?" Miss Taylor asked her.

"Kuromokuzai in Japan. It was a small village." Lucy replied when she looked up at the smiling teacher.

"Was it OK there?" Miss Taylor asked.

"No. I was bullied at school by everybody and my family abused me." Lucy answered instantly.

"Oh my god. Are you OK now?" Miss Taylor asked with her hand clasped to her mouth in deep concern.

"Yeah. I'd rather not talk about it." Lucy replied sternly.

"I'm sorry." The teacher apologised immediately.

Lucy nodded her head in acknowledgment.

"Are you Japanese at all. I mean you have a typical American accent." Miss Taylor asked yet another question, though now trying to change the subject.

"I have a small amount of Japanese blood in me. However, my family are originally from Sacramento, California but moved to Kuromokuzai before I was born because they hated the hustle and bustle and they wanted tradition and peace. Somebody told them about a village in Japan that was quiet and easy going, and traditional. That was Kuromokuzai. With that in mind, they moved there. Soon after, my life began." Lucy explained as she looked on at her class jogging around the track.

"Oh. That's…..unusual." Miss Taylor remarked as she struggled for what to say.

"I know." Lucy replied as her eyes remained glued to the jogging students.

"What family ties to you have that ensures that small amount of Japanese heritage inside you?" Miss Taylor asked.

"My cousin, Yutaka Keiji mostly." Lucy replied immediately.

"Do you live with him now?" Miss Taylor asked yet another question.

"Yes. We only moved here last week along with my brother Louis and my sister Mia who are also at this school today." Lucy replied once more.

The lesson was finally over and while the teacher stacked all the cones together, the students headed back to the changing rooms with soaked, mud covered shoes, shirts and tracksuit trousers or shorts.

Lucy caught up to Joseph and walked alongside him. She looked at him with a warming smile etched onto her face.

"Er…..hi." Joseph began, suddenly shy and nervous. He looked back at Lucy momentarily and then down at the floor where it remained as he was too embarrassed to look Lucy in the eye.

Lucy giggled as a way of covering up the fact that she was also shy, though her eyes remained fixed to Joseph.

"Hi." Was all she could muster for the moment before she giggled again.

They continued to walk side by side towards the changing rooms.

Lucy's nerves very nearly got the better of her but as they reached the building housing the changing rooms, she plucked up enough courage to say what was on her mind.

"Thank you for sticking up for me. Nobody ever does that." She said with an innocent tone in her voice.

"No problem." Joseph replied plainly before entering the boys' changing room.

Emily and her friends stepped into the building.

"You're weird and you're a freak." Emily taunted Lucy and used her shoulder to barge Lucy rudely out of her way, forcing Lucy back a few steps.

Emily giggled as she entered the girls' changing room.

Lucy was angry inside and almost said something that she would regret, holding it in at the last second.

"It was good talking to you." Miss Taylor said as she passed Lucy outside the changing rooms with the cones in her hands. Lucy simply smiled at her as she passed.

Lucy retrieved her tattered bag from the rack and hoisted it on her shoulder.

Then she finally made her way back outside, followed by none other than Emily and her two friends. Emily deliberately barged Lucy out of her way with her shoulder again and just as she turned around to look at Lucy and taunt her, Lucy utilised a backhanded slap, catching Emily violently across her cheek, leaving a large and angry looking red mark.

Lucy's fuse had finally blown, her anger past boiling point.

Emily fell to her hands and knees from the vicious impact and coughed a little.

She then got back to her feet and rubbed her cheek, standing immediately in front of Lucy and said:

"I expect to see you on the playing field in five minutes."

Lucy looked at her sternly before nodding her head.

Emily wandered away with her friends just as Lucy made her way to the school playing fields.

It was a damp patch of grass soaked in mud as a result of the earlier rainfall. Many children were playing and running amok on this field.

Lucy looked around the field for Emily but was stunned when a nasty backhanded slap caught Lucy across her mouth, causing her teeth to slice her tongue so violently that it opened a long and deep cut running vertically down the left side of her tongue.

Lucy soon fell to her hands and knees and saw her own blood dripping onto the grass.

"Two can play at that game." Emily taunted as she looked down at Lucy, her friends behind Emily.

A whole group of students surrounded both Lucy and Emily as if they were in an arena.

"FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!" Chanted the posse of students continuously while punching the air in delight.

Lucy got up, her blood drooling and dripping from her mouth and onto her shirt and tie.

Emily tripped Lucy up, Lucy fell to the floor sprawled on her back and coughed when blood began to enter her throat.

"Why is everybody so easy?" Emily asked herself as Lucy sat up on the grass to gather her bearings again. Lucy's clothes, both front and back were covered in mud as was a large amount of her stringy hair.

Lucy got up again only to be kicked harshly in the stomach, winding her and she fell back on her hands and knees. She coughed up blood onto the grass and began to get groggy.

Mia became curious about the gathered chanting children and rushed over to see what all the fuss was about.

She shoved her way through the crowd of students and was horrified by what she saw.

"Oh my god! Lucy!" Mia yelled in deep concern for her sister.

Lucy was sitting on the grass as blood dribbled and drooled from her mouth. She was also coughing and gurgling on more blood and she was clutching her stomach with both hands. She felt weak.

"Get up, jackass!" Emily demanded with outstretched arms as if she was begging to be hit.

Lucy got up slowly.

Emily attempted to kick Lucy maliciously again but Lucy grabbed her foot and pulled it up, causing Emily to slip over onto her back.

Lucy came over to Emily with her hair messily covering her face. Then the weakened Lucy sat on top of Emily to pin her down on the ground.

"Come on, you freak! I dare you!" Emily exclaimed wildly.

Lucy looked at her for a moment as if she was wondering what to do. Mia was concerned about Lucy and had tears falling from her cheeks as she looked at the large red patch on the grass, knowing that was her sister's blood.

"Hurry up, you coward I haven't got all day!" Emily taunted again. Lucy was really angry inside and could no longer keep it to herself.

Lucy dealt Emily two swift and violent punches around Emily's eyes, leaving sore red marks around her eyes.

"I can't see, you idiot!" Emily exclaimed harshly.

When Emily regained most of her vision, still partially blurred, she tried to force the palm of her left hand into Lucy's face, but Lucy got a firm grip on Emily's wrist with her right hand.

Blood was still drooling and dripping from Lucy's mouth and it began to stain Emily's shirt and tie which was already heavily stained in mud, much like Lucy's.

Lucy pressed her fingers against Emily's and with force she began to bend Emily's fingers back.

"What are you doing?" Emily asked in sudden panic.

Lucy did nothing but look at her as she continued bending back Emily's fingers.

Eventually Emily's fingers began to click loudly as Lucy was bending them back to far.

"Please stop!" Emily pleaded as a sudden sharp pain coursed through her left hand.

Lucy did not. Instead, she continued to force Emily's fingers back. Finally, a major clicking sound occurred in each of Emily's four fingers.

Emily screamed in pain. Lucy let go as Emily's fingers were in mangled, unusual positions. The fingers were fractured. The crowd of students gasped in shock.

Then finally, part of the broken bones in Emily's first and third fingers tore through her skin, exposing the blood soaked bone as more blood began to pour down her arm and onto the grass.

Emily screamed and cried even more. There were more gasps of shock from the crowd of students.

Lucy got up and ran a few inches away before falling to her hands and knees from feeling weak and then vomited onto the grass as she became sick from what she had done.

Emily sat up on the grass covered in mud like Lucy and could not look at her mangled fingers.

Mia rushed to Lucy's side and crouched beside her.

"Are you OK, Lucy?" Mia asked in her worried state. Blood and vomit trickled from Lucy's mouth.

"Just about." Lucy replied.

"Let's get you to the first aid room." Mia suggested. Lucy got up slowly and Mia put her arm around her sister to support her. They began to trudge off the field slowly, leaving Emily behind who was being tended to by a number of students.

"What happened, Lucy? How did it get this far?" Mia asked.

"She kept calling me names, tripping me up and shoulder barging me, so after she barged me again, I flipped and I hit her." Lucy replied. Then she began to cry and tears cascaded down her pale cheeks.

"Lucy, it's not your fault. If anything, that girl deserved it for what she did to you." Mia said trying to reassure Lucy.

Lucy was worried deep inside that others would see Emily as the victim and not her.

They continued to walk on the concrete pavement towards the first aid room and Lucy spat blood onto the floor to stop it clogging up the inside of her mouth and throat.

Joseph was wandering towards them and was shocked to see the state that Lucy was in as he knew nothing about what went about on the playing field.

"Why is she bleeding?" He asked in concern.

Mia looked at him and then at Lucy.

"Is he your friend?" Mia asked Lucy.

"Yeah." Lucy replied faintly.

"Do you want him to walk with us?" Mia asked.

"Yeah." Lucy replied identically to her last answer.

Joseph smiled and like Mia, put his arm around Lucy to support her. Or was it something else?

Lucy looked at him with blood still dripping from her mouth and smiled at him.

"Why are you bleeding?" Joseph asked again.

"Lucy is bleeding and covered in mud because she was in a fight with another girl." Mia answered for Lucy. Lucy nodded at him.

"I bet it was Emily." Joseph assumed immediately.

"Yeah." Lucy replied, confirming his assumption.

"Wait, how do you know that?" Mia asked demandingly.

"Emily Anderson is in the same class that me and Lucy are in. She is a bully, and an evil one at that. She is big headed, nasty to almost everybody apart from her friends Sophia and Ashleigh and she especially hates people who are completely different to her. She has been in a lot of fights in this school and has apparently never been defeated." Joseph explained. Lucy smiled at him again.

"You beat her?" Joseph asked excitedly.

"Yeah." Lucy replied in the same way again.

"Lucy broke Emily's fingers and gave her two black eyes." Mia explained.

"My best friend beat Emily!" Joseph exclaimed proudly.

Lucy smiled at him again.

They finally came across the first aid room, manned by the school doctor and was unoccupied by any student luckily.

The three of them proceeded to enter.

"Oh. I was expecting a quiet lunch break." The doctor remarked.

"Sorry. My sister was involved in a vicious fight with a girl named Emily Anderson." Mia explained.

Lucy did not like the smell of chemicals and medicine in the pure white first aid room and she covered her nose momentarily. The doctor noted this.

"I apologise about the smell, but I cannot change it unfortunately." He explained with a smile and then he looked over to Mia.

"Emily Anderson. Now there's a name I am familiar with around here." The doctor remarked.

"In what way?" Mia asked with interest.

"I've had so many students come in here with injuries received from fights with Emily. I've never seen an injury quite as bad as your sister's though." The doctor explained with concern as he looked at the spots of red blood on the otherwise clean white floor and then at Lucy's mouth which still dripped with blood.

"Lucy will be OK, won't she?" Joseph asked with concern.

"Yes, young man. Your friend will be just fine." The doctor replied with a smile.

"But you said that her injury is the worst injury you've ever seen here." Joseph remarked, still concerned.

"It doesn't mean I cannot deal with it." The doctor replied firmly.

"What do you think about Emily?" Mia asked.

"Well I'll be honest with you as long as you don't tell Blackwood what I said. I think Emily is a little shit and I do not know how she has managed to escape being expelled. Her parents obviously have no control over her and it's just crazy how she likes fighting with other students." The doctor replied as honestly as he could.

This stunned but pleased all of Lucy, Mia and Joseph.

"Excuse me, sir but what should we call you?" Joseph asked, unsure of how to say it.

"Call me Doctor Banfield." The doctor replied. He is of African-American descent and has platted black hair in the form of cornrows. He is wearing an all white doctor's suit.

"Lucy broke Emily's fingers on her left hand and gave her two black eyes." Mia explained with a smile.

"Good. Maybe it'll teach Emily a lesson that she needed." Banfield replied gruffly, though also with a smile.

He finally focussed his attention on Lucy and in particular her injury. He put white gloves on his hands to defect germs and diseases.

"Could you pull your hair back for me for a few minutes?" Banfield instructed. Mia moved Lucy's hair over Lucy's back, making Banfield's job a little easier.

"I don't think I've ever seen anybody with hair as long as yours." Banfield remarked, trying to strike up a conversation with Lucy. Lucy simply smiled at him.

"Open wide." He instructed. Lucy did so with no fuss and Banfield noted that all of Lucy's saliva within her mouth had become red with blood.

"Jesus. That is one bad cut." Banfield remarked with surprise.

Lucy rolled her red eyes, knowing that already.

"What is it, Doctor Banfield?" Joseph asked.

"It appears that your friend has a long, deep cut on her tongue, running lengthwise down the left side of it." Banfield explained.

"I guess that's where all the blood is coming from." Mia determined.

"Indeed it is, but I'm concerned about how much is coming out." Banfield remarked as he looked at the floor beneath Lucy, where now a small, irregularly shaped red pool lay.

"Is she going to need stitches?" Mia asked.

"It's a possibility, but I want to clean it out and leave it at that preferably." Banfield replied.

He grabbed a glass of water and some tissues.

He handed the water to Lucy.

"Drink this and move it around your mouth." Banfield instructed.

Lucy obeyed and held the glass to her mouth, taking in some water as some blood dribbled down the side of the glass.

She made sure that all of her mouth was freshened up with water and spat it out into the sink in a diluted red colour.

Banfield then dabbed some of the tissues against Lucy's cut on her tongue, making Lucy wince as the cold water stung her cut, wiping the remainder of the blood away as the cut seemingly shut itself down.

"It's stopped." Banfield confirmed to the relief of them all.

"I'm sorry." Lucy said apologetically as she pointed at the blood on the floor.

"Don't worry." Banfield reassured her.

Lucy's messy hair concealed part of her face once again.

She proceeded to give Joseph a tight, warming hug as a sign of friendship.

"You're my friend now." She whispered into Joseph's ear.

Joseph smiled and embraced Lucy, making Mia smile, knowing that through the long and winding road, her sister had finally gained herself a good friend.

"Come on, you two let's go." Mia said with a smile.

Lucy and Joseph let go of each other and they thanked Banfield for his work on patching Lucy up.

Joseph turned to Lucy.

"Is it still sore?" He asked about the cut on Lucy's tongue.

"Yeah." Lucy replied faintly.

"How sore?" Joseph asked again.

"Very, but its not bleeding so it's OK." Lucy answered immediately.

Joseph smiled in the knowledge that his new friend was perfectly OK.

Principle Blackwood happened to be walking past them at that moment with a concerned expression on his face.

He caught a glimpse of Lucy with Mia and Joseph and after he did a double take, he turned around, clearing his throat to get their attention.

"Lucy, I need to see you in my office urgently. Somebody else is here to see you as well." Blackwood began.

"Are we allowed to tag along?" Mia asked in hope.

"Of course. I can also get your account on the events that happened thirty-two minutes ago as apparently you were a witness." Blackwood replied with a gruff chuckle.

"OK thank you." Mia said gratefully.

The three of them were ushered hurriedly to Blackwood's office, passing many eagle eyed students knowing the event of the lunch break. They knew who Lucy is and gave her odd looks as her dark and unkempt hair almost completely covered her face. Mia looked at Lucy with worrying thoughts cast through her mind.

She could not see Lucy's face and felt the need to ask.

"Are you OK, Lucy?"

Lucy turned her head to face her, looking quite creepy and unsettling with her hair concealing her face almost completely.

"I'm fine." Lucy replied faintly.

They eventually came across Blackwood's office and promptly entered it, looking almost identical to the last time they had been here.

"Yutaka!" Lucy yelled suddenly as she saw him standing casually against a wall. Lucy then ran towards Yutaka and hugged him tightly.

Mia smiled at the sight.

"You're covered in mud, Lucy." Yutaka remarked with a gentle smile.

"I know and I'm sorry." Lucy replied with an innocent voice.

Yutaka continued to smile.

Blackwood sat at his pinewood desk and cleared his throat to get their attention again. It did the trick.

"Right. Well you all know why you're here." Blackwood began.

They all looked at each other and nodded.

"There was a fight earlier this lunchtime involving Lucy and a girl named Emily Anderson, correct?" He asked.

They all nodded in unison.

"Apparently, Lucy, you dealt her two black eyes and broke four of her fingers on her left hand." He continued, now solely concentrating on Lucy.

"Yes, sir." Lucy replied, her face enshrouded within a thick wall of her black hair.

Blackwood looked slightly annoyed at this.

"Lucy, could you pull your hair away from your face as I cannot see it at all." He instructed in an annoyed tone of voice.

Yutaka moved Lucy's hair away from her face so it could be seen clearly.

"Thank you. Anyway, people have also stated that Emily split open your tongue and kicked you full on in the stomach. Is that true?" Blackwood continued with his questioning.

"Yes." Lucy replied immediately and rubbed her stomach as it ached by coincidence.

"Well I have news that will probably make your stomach ache worse." Blackwood explained as if he was building to a crescendo.

"What is it?" Yutaka asked with quite some concern.

"Emily's parents, who I was on the phone to earlier, want to go to court over this matter." Blackwood revealed with a gloomy voice.

"What? But they can't. Lucy is just a child." Yutaka reacted angrily. This upset Lucy and she burst into tears.

Yutaka comforted her with a hug.

"I tried telling them for all it is worth that Emily was just as bigger part of this as Lucy, but they would not take it for an answer." Blackwood explained.

"Lucy told me that Emily started it all by tripping Lucy up in the corridor and barging Lucy out of the way with her shoulders. Lucy also told me that she fought back in self defence." Mia revealed with worry and with an angrier tone.

"That would make sense." Blackwood remarked.

"Emily should not be in this school anyway. All she does is fight anybody who is any different to her." Mia replied angrily.

"Who told you this?" Blackwood asked calmly in the midst of the now heated discussion.

"Joseph and Doctor Banfield, sir." Mia replied, slightly calmer now.

"I see. I guess Doctor Banfield was told by the students who came to him after the alleged fight. I must talk with him later on as nobody has told me this before." Blackwood revealed, much to the dismay of Yutaka.

This is unbelievable. You've let all these students be picked on and bullied by this monster." Yutaka reacted angrily.

"Mr Keiji, I offer my sincerest apologies." Blackwood tried apologising to no avail.

"No, I will not accept this. You should apologise to the parents of students that this fucking rat has been bullying and you should be keeping a close eye on what goes on around here!" Yutaka retorted in his sudden rage.

"Sir, will you please just calm down?" Blackwood asked as he tried defusing the situation.

"Why should I? My nine year old cousin, who I am now responsible for, is facing a court challenge and all you can do is tell me to calm down? Well I will not, not until you tell Emily's parents exactly what kind of monster she is!" Yutaka continued in pure anger.

"OK, OK. I will grant you that, and after I've finished making that call, I will tell Lucy. However I cannot guarantee that Emily's parents will change their minds." Blackwood explained as calmly as possible.

"Thank you. Anyway, I must go." Yutaka replied as he suddenly calmed down and hugged Lucy again.

The school bell rang out loud and clear.

"I believe it is time for your next lesson, children." Blackwood remarked.

Lucy, Mia and Joseph nodded in unison before they followed Yutaka out of the office.

"By the way, Lucy, I will come soon to tell you that news regarding Emily's parents." Blackwood called out.

Lucy nodded again and turned away, heading for her classroom.

As Mia reached her class, she and Lucy embraced each other with a hug.

"You are OK now, aren't you, Lucy?" She asked to make sure.

"I'm fine." Lucy replied insistently.

Mia turned to Joseph.

"You will look after her won't you?" She advised him like an order or demand.

"Of course I will." Joseph replied excitedly.

"Good." Mia replied with a smile before she entered her classroom of rowdy eleven year old children.

Lucy and Joseph continued onwards to their classroom as a number of students stared at Lucy. It seemed as though the brawl with Emily had made her into a bit of a celebrity among the school students.

They quietly approached their classroom and as Lucy's face appeared to the class, the majority of the students gave her rapturous applauds, save for the odd few such as Matthew.

Lucy took it all in and bowed to those applauding students.

Joseph smiled, knowing that his friend had won the respect of most of the class.

As the class continued to applaud, Lucy and Joseph took their seats at two desks that sat side by side.

Lucy sat at the desk that she was sitting at during the first lesson. Joseph however sat at Emily's desk, causing an uproar from those behind him.

"Move yourself and that mud monster friend of yours somewhere else." Matthew ordered cockily as he referred to Lucy's mud spattered uniform.

"Why should we move?" Joseph asked angrily as he turned around to face Matthew.

"Because I said so." Matthew replied pathetically.

"Ooh I'm so scared." Joseph taunted with a smile.

"Do you think you're tough because you have mud monster by your side?" Matthew asked Joseph while taunting Lucy again.

Lucy looked back at Matthew, her red eyes darkly taunting Matthew right back.

"What are you looking at, freak?" Matthew taunted Lucy.

Lucy did not say a thing, believing she would be wasting her breath. Joseph did however.

"Leave Lucy alone. Just because she hurt your pretend friend Emily and now she's not here, Lucy acted on self defence." Joseph lashed back verbally at Matthew.

Matthew rose to his feet and trudged angrily over to Joseph.

Lucy looked at Matthew again just as Matthew prepared to hit Joseph through pure frustration.

Lucy, through her powerful telekinesis, held Matthew's hand back whereupon it stopped inches from Joseph's face with the fist tightly clenched.

"What's going on?" Matthew asked with a freaked out expression drawn on his face.

"Punch me then if you're going to." Joseph taunted with a smile.

"I can't." Matthew replied with panic in his voice.

Matthew looked at Lucy who glared back at him with her blood red eyes and with her face crossed with the darkest of smiles, sending a shiver down Matthew's spine.

Then Joseph took Matthew by surprise when he punched him to the floor, catching Matthew on the nose as he did so.

Matthew's glasses fell to the floor with him and cracked slightly on one side.

His nose also began to bleed onto the floor.

Matthew rose to his knees slowly and put on his cracked glasses in his daze.

He rubbed his nose along his arm and to his horror saw a smear of his own blood staring back at him.

"Look what you did." Matthew remarked to Joseph, showing him the blood on his arm.

Joseph and Lucy both smiled in dark ways at him to show their satisfaction.

Mrs Lambert entered the room at that precise moment and reeled back in shock to see Matthew bleeding out from his nose and with a small patch of red on the carpet, signifying blood.

"What happened?" Mrs Lambert asked politely.

"Joseph punched me, Miss." Matthew replied, missing out most of the truth deliberately.

"Yeah, only because you were taunting and threatening me and Lucy." Joseph retorted with the rest of the truth in a nutshell.

"OK. Matthew, you clean yourself up at the first aid room and then you and Joseph will go and see the Principle." Mrs Lambert instructed.

"What? But Matthew provoked me, Miss." Joseph protested insistently.

"I'm not changing my mind, Joseph. Especially in the knowledge of that horrible fight that your friend Lucy was involved in." Mrs Lambert explained clearly.

"Fine!" Joseph answered back as he and Matthew wandered into the corridor bickering still.

Just as Mrs Lambert was preparing to begin her lesson as stated on the schedule, Principle Blackwood entered the room.

He approached the teacher and explained that he needed to speak to Lucy for a moment before he approached Lucy at her desk.

"I called Emily's parents to tell them about Emily's 'tactics' in this school but they would not change their minds. They say their daughter is well behaved and would not dream of hurting a soul." Blackwood explained as calmly to Lucy.

Tears of hurt and sadness fell from Lucy's pale cheeks as she despaired and buried her face in her arms on the table, sobbing loudly.

Lucy was convinced that she had done nothing wrong.

"I'm sorry, Lucy." Blackwood sympathised before he turned to leave the classroom, leaving Lucy in tears.

Lucy knew that Emily's parents were lying from under their rotten teeth.

"Lucy would you like a few minutes to compose yourself?" Mrs Lambert asked her thoughtfully.

Lucy looked up momentarily with her eyes pouring forth tears like thick falling rain and she nodded slowly with some nervous uncertainty before burying her face in her folded arms on the table, whereby she continued to sob.

Mrs Lambert went on to explain the lesson plan regardless. It was maths and the students were to learn about shapes, areas and perimeters.

Twenty minutes had passed by as if they never existed and Lucy tried to shrug off the impending court case in her head to start on her work.

A number of students kept looking up at Lucy as if she was weird and abnormal. Lucy ignored each one wisely, though with much annoyance.

Joseph and Matthew arrived back from the Principle's office still bickering with each other. Matthew's nose was no longer bleeding and the only evidence to suggest it had ever happened was the small red patch on the carpet.

Joseph sat at the desk next to Lucy again, much to the dismay of Matthew for the second time.

"Move, scum bucket. Nobody wants you there!" Matthew reacted angrily again.

"Lucy wants me here." Joseph replied just as angrily.

"Who cares about her?" Matthew asked in a mocking sarcastic tone while also making fun of Lucy's hair by grabbing his own and then illustrating by hand how long it is.

It made each of his friends around him laugh hysterically.

"Who cares about you?" Lucy asked quietly yet sternly while she looked at her work and never intended to look back at Matthew. Lucy knew that he was mocking her even though she never set her eyes on him.

"What did you say?" Matthew asked angrily though he knew full well what she said.

Lucy ignored him and continued on with her work, pretending Matthew never existed.

Matthew had risen up from his seat.

"I said what did you say?" He asked demandingly.

Lucy continued to ignore him.

"Matthew move to the front please." Mrs Lambert ordered as she lost patience with Matthew's temper.

"Why me? What about Joseph or that…..thing over there?" Matthew asked as he mockingly referenced Lucy again.

"Get out, Matthew!" Mrs Lambert ordered as she pointed towards the classroom door.

"I'll be glad too!" Matthew replied angrily as he picked up his belongings and headed towards the door.

He looked back at Lucy and scowled as he exited the room.

Lucy simply sat there smiling at him.

"I'm sorry, Lucy. Matthew is a bit of an attention seeker at times." Mrs Lambert apologised.

Lucy looked at her and nodded in acceptance.

"Thank god he's gone." Joseph remarked.

Lucy gave him a mean look and Joseph noticed this.

"What's up?" Joseph asked her, sounding a bit worried.

Lucy then smiled at him calmly, leaned over to him and gave him a light kiss on the cheek, much to the pleasure of most of the class.

"Aww!" They chorused loudly.

Lucy became highly embarrassed as she went back to her table and blushed immensely, leaving her cheeks bright red.

Joseph blushed identically and rubbed his cheek from his shock and happiness with his hand after he felt Lucy's lips on his cheek and her hair brushed against his face as she performed this.

"That's very sweet, Lucy, but please try not to disrupt the class." Mrs Lambert warned calmly with a half smile.

Lucy nodded her head and covered her face with her hands from her sheer embarrassment.

Deep within however, it pleased her knowing that she had bravely plucked up the courage to do it.

Joseph looked at Lucy with a sweet, innocent smile as if he was begging for more.

Lucy looked back at him and smiled just as innocently.

"Come on, you two. Get your work done." Mrs Lambert instructed with a chuckle.

"Yes, Miss." Joseph replied excitedly.

Lucy giggled innocently after he said this and looked at him again. She then tried to finish her work again, to no avail as her mind was set on other things.

Finally, the school bell rang signalling the end of the school day.

"OK, class pack up your belongings and have a good weekend." Mrs Lambert instructed. Many students rushed out of the door, leaving Joseph and Lucy.

They were packing away their belongings and giggling cheekily to one another.

To Lucy this all felt weird and wonderful, especially stemming from somebody willing to be her friend and quite possibly more.

Once they had done, they headed outside the classroom after bidding farewell to Mrs Lambert.

Once out, they wandered down the corridor and could not stop looking at each other, doing so endlessly with dreamy smiles.

The majority of students thought it was strange as Lucy and Joseph giggled nervously like three year olds to one another.

They finally emerged from the exit to find Yutaka, Hideo and Syiren waiting for Lucy among numerous other chatting parents gathered outside the school premises.

Joseph took off to greet his parents and instantly and excitedly pointed in Lucy's direction.

Lucy, upon seeing Yutaka, immediately raced over to him for a hug, which she received instantly.

"How are you, Lucy?" Yutaka asked.

"Fine." Lucy replied bluntly.

Before Yutaka could ask about the court case, Joseph's parents came over to greet them.

"Hello, sir. I'm Joseph Manning's mother and this here is his father. Are you Lucy Colvin-Carrington's father as Lucy is all Joseph is talking about right now." Joseph's mother introduced herself and Joseph's father. She had short, curled black hair with large golden ear hoops protruding from her ears. She also had hazel coloured eyes and was wearing a high class red dress with high heeled shoes.

Joseph's father was an altogether scruffier man, with short, messy grey hair and blue eyes. He wore a blue ad white striped t-shirt usually reserved for golf courses, blur tracksuit trousers and muddy black trainers.

Yutaka turned around and put on a welcoming smile.

"Hi, I'm Yutaka Keiji and I'm Lucy's cousin and guardian." Yutaka greeted Joseph's parents with a handshake before he adjusted the white mask he was wearing that concealed his whole head apart from his eyes and mouth. He was still also wearing his black tuxedo.

Lucy emerged from behind Yutaka and Syiren.

"You must be Lucy I assume." Joseph's father determined.

Lucy nodded her head, while most of her face was hidden behind a thick wall of her long black hair.

"I apologise. Lucy is often shy when she meets new people which is why you cannot see her face and why she is not speaking." Yutaka explained apologetically.

"It's OK, Yutaka. I can understand that." Joseph's father reassured him as he scanned Lucy's mud spattered uniform with his eyes.

Joseph's mother asked Yutaka out of curiosity:

"Is there any reason you wear that mask?" Yutaka nodded and looked at her.

"I am a ninja and my code of honour is that I never reveal the appearance of my face. Even Lucy does not know my generic appearance." Yutaka explained.

"I see. That's unusual." Joseph's mother remarked, giving Yutaka a funny look.

Joseph interrupted on their conversation.

"Mommy am I allowed to go to Lucy's house?" He asked in serious hope as he glared at his mother with intent.

"Yes, sweetheart but you must promise to be good." His mother replied sincerely.

Joseph bounded up and down in sheer excitement.

"I will! This is going to be so much fun!" Joseph screamed as a result of his excitement that coursed through his body.

Lucy and Yutaka smiled at this as they stood beside one another.

Joseph's parents trawled off home after they had bid goodbye to Joseph, Lucy and Yutaka.

"Are you ready to go?" Yutaka asked them all.

"Yeah, sure." Mia replied quickly.

They began to walk home together. Lucy and Joseph were side by side, hand in hand as they left the school a distant landmark and passed a number of ram shackled, derelict buildings on the way.

They stopped at a road crossing, kept in check by a row of traffic lights that beamed brightly from their green lights.

A Multi Purpose Vehicle (MPV) doused in black passed quickly in front of them.

Lucy looked up and standing across the road before her blood red eyes was her mother.

"Your powers will spiral into chaotic bloodletting." Francine uttered, her voice echoed and of a dark entity.

Francine's face was pale and her eyes a creepy shade of bright blue. Her dull grey shirt and jeans were torn in various places.

A large yellow truck flew past them and by the time it had passed, Francine had disappeared.

Lucy's face could not mask her feelings. Feelings of worry and fear crossed her mind carefully, but for Joseph's sake she did not freak out.

Yutaka however saw right through Lucy's masked emotions.

"What's wrong, Lucy?" He asked as the traffic lights changed over to red, enabling them to cross.

Lucy looked at him, Joseph looked at her.

"I saw my mommy." Lucy replied sheepishly as she also neglected to mention what Francine's apparition had stated.

Yutaka felt like quizzing Lucy over it, but due to the presence of Joseph he decided it would be best to try at another time.

Lucy looked at Joseph and smiled, tightening her grip as they held hands. Joseph smiled back warmly, hoping that Lucy's emotions are still in check.

Luckily for him, they were.

They finally approached the block of apartments that Syiren inhabits.

Yutaka was ready to embrace the block's inner odours with much disdain.

Lucy opened the door, waiting to go inside…..


	4. Home Sweet Home

**Home Sweet Home:**  
As Lucy concluded on opening the battered brown door, she reeled back in shock as her father Nick stood there in front of her.  
Nick's short black hair was matted and scruffy, his white business shirt and red tie was torn and tattered as were his black business trousers.  
His eyes were the same haunting shade of bright blue, exactly like Francine's own.  
"Listen to what your mother told you, Lucy." Nick instructed as he faded away.  
Lucy rubbed her head in her hands in an attempt to decipher what she saw was real and to remove the memory of it from her mind.  
"What is up with you now?" Hideo asked her as he stood beside Yutaka.  
Lucy looked behind her, straight at Hideo.  
"My daddy. I just saw my daddy." Lucy replied, her deeper little girl's voice sounding down toned and annoyed with a hint of anxiety.  
They all trawled quickly up the stairs, passing a scruffy hooded man urinating against the grime riddled wall on the way, which was something that certainly did not please Yutaka's smell senses.  
"For fuck sake does anyone know how to use a toilet around here?" Yutaka asked in a purely sarcastic, gruff tone.  
The man, wearing a black hoodie and blue jeans heard every word Yutaka had uttered and replied by giving Yutaka the middle finger.  
This incensed Yutaka somewhat.  
"It's true. You're all like fucking dogs, pissing up walls and the like!" Yutaka shouted from his position on the stairs.  
"Unless you wanna fight, fuck off, you luchadore wannabe." The hooded man retorted with a broken sounding voice and then puffing on a cigarette, mocking Yutaka's mask as he did so.  
Yutaka descended the stairs to teach the urinating man a harsh lesson.  
"Bring it on, sucker." The man taunted Yutaka as he zipped up his scruffy jeans and clicked the bones in his fingers.  
"What are you doing?" Hideo asked Yutaka.  
Yutaka ignored the question Hideo had posed and with a loud metal like sound, he drew the Dragon Sword from under his trouser leg.  
"He's unarmed Yutaka!" Syiren yelled as the two men walked towards each other.  
At that precise moment, the hooded man brandished a .38 Revolver and pointed it at Yutaka.  
"It's a live one too." The man revealed as he showed the gun's round cartridge, home to six stainless silver bullets, before clicking it into place within the gun.  
Yutaka held his sword in an offensive position before slashing it at the hooded man, getting nothing other than thin air.  
"Too slow, ninja man." The hooded man mocked.  
Yutaka tried swiping at the man again to no avail.  
This time though it was a critical mistake, as was Yutaka's split second reaction time which as rare as Yutaka makes these mistakes, it ends up a costly error, for the man had fired a bullet from his gun, penetrating the skin of Yutaka's arm and lodged in his flesh.  
The resultant impact of the bullet tearing through his skin caused a large spurt of blood to spray out of the hole.  
"Oh my god, Yutaka!" Lucy screamed and ran to the stricken ninja's aid, followed by Hideo.  
Lucy burst into tears and hugged her cousin lovingly and tightly to comfort him as she sat down on the floor beside him.  
"Thank you...Lucy." Yutaka said weakly, comforted greatly by Lucy's warming hug.  
Joseph began to feel ill as he heard and saw the blood squirting profusely from Yutaka's left arm, leaving a vivid crimson red smear on the grimy floor.  
The hooded man wandered up to Lucy and Yutaka and revealed his face for the first time after removing his hood.  
All of Lucy, Yutaka and Hideo had shocked expressions on their faces.  
"Takahashi?" Yutaka said in surprise.  
"Very good, Mr Keiji that you remember me." Takahashi replied with a mocking chuckle.  
"Fuck you!" Yutaka exclaimed as loud as he could possibly go.  
"What the hell are you doing in Belmont?" Hideo asked angrily.  
"I've come to claim Keiji's life as revenge for what he and the girl did in Kuromokuzai." Takahashi replied in his gruff voice.  
"Don't worry, Takahashi, your wish will never see the light of day." Yutaka said weakly but with an all serious tone.  
"If I can help it, Keiji it's more than just a possibility. I should also take away the girl's life while I'm here as she is more trouble than she is worth." Takahashi taunted Yutaka again.  
Lucy glared at Takahashi, her blood red eyes flooded with tears as more fell from her cheeks and stained the floor beneath her. Yutaka noticed this and put his healthy arm around her.  
"Don't cry, Lucy. I will be fine, trust me on that." He said trying to comfort Lucy.  
Lucy wiped the tears away from her eyes with her hand and then brandished her Glaive from her tattered backpack and flicked it open.  
Takahashi was too busy puffing on his cigarette to notice what Lucy was doing and she proceeded to plunge one of the Glaive's blades into Takahashi's groin, making him yell in agony and drop his cigarette to the floor.  
Blood sprayed on the wall from the wound and Takahashi began to back away, holding his groin in an attempt to stop the blood loss.  
Lucy turned her attention to Yutaka again, noting his face had become pale.  
"Yutaka, please stay." Lucy pleaded as she began to sob into Yutaka's healthy arm.  
"I will...Lucy." Yutaka replied weakly again.  
"Get the apartment door open." Hideo instructed to Syiren.  
Syiren nodded and in a flash, the door became unlocked.  
Lucy and Hideo helped the weakened Yutaka to his feet and walked him into the apartment, slowly but safely.  
They set him down on a chair at the dinner table.  
"Lucy, go with Joseph to your room please." Hideo ordered.  
Much to his surprise, Lucy did not complain and instead nodded her head. Then she politely grabbed Joseph's hand and held it firmly with her own.  
"Me and Yutaka do not want you to see him in pain." Hideo explained.  
"She already has." Yutaka said weakly still.  
"Well I meant she and her friend should be spared of watching the pain of healing." Hideo explained again.  
Lucy and Joseph settled into Lucy's allocated bedroom.  
"Are you OK?" Joseph asked her with concern.  
"I'm fine." Lucy replied truthfully as she was no longer crying.  
Lucy looked at the dried mud that covered her school uniform and giggled.  
"It's a mess." She stated.  
"I know." Joseph replied, giggling also.  
Lucy playfully pushed Joseph and he fell on his back and lay on the floor.  
Lucy stood over him and sat upon his warm stomach, making her giggle some more.  
Joseph smiled at her, knowing deep inside that she is in love with him.  
Lucy's dark, unkempt hair dangled innocently onto Joseph as she looked at him sweetly. Joseph gave him the same look back.  
Lucy lowered her head to Joseph's and gave him a kiss on the cheek which was something Joseph gave Lucy back, making one another blush as they giggled nervously.  
"I love you." Lucy uttered faintly and lovingly.  
Those sacred words made Joseph blush more and he felt exactly the same way about Lucy  
"I love you too." Joseph replied excitedly.  
Lucy smiled warmly. It felt like a breath of fresh air to her, amidst all the painful bullying and torment that she regularly receives, somebody is so willing to care for her, something that no school pupil had ever done before, and it made Lucy feel wanted and happy.  
Lucy could then hear the groans and cries of pain emanating from Yutaka, hoping his wound will heal.  
She stood up and dwelled on the memory of the incident. It upset her inside, thinking about this, especially given that it happened to the one that saved her, the one who took her under his wing and give her the love and care she had always craved from her family.  
"What's the matter?" Joseph asked as he approached Lucy again.  
"Yutaka's hurt." Lucy replied, stating the obvious.  
"You must love him a lot." Joseph assumed.  
"Yeah I do. He's the best cousin in the world and acts as my daddy." Lucy explained calmly.  
"Why? Where's your real dad?" Joseph asked in sudden puzzlement.  
Lucy's eyes suddenly changed to a haunting shade of bright blue, mimicking the apparitions of her not so fabled mother and father.  
"I killed him." She replied, a dark smile etched onto her pale face and letting off a creepy giggle. Lucy's eyes then reverted back to their "normal" blood red colour.

Joseph playfully hit Lucy on the arm after a moment of uneasy calm that swept through the room, completely unreceptive to both of Lucy's shock revelation and her temporary eye colour change.  
"You're a real joker aren't you, Lucy." Joseph mocked her and laughed considerably.  
"Er...yeah sure. Whatever you say." Lucy replied, suddenly dumbed down to her so called joke.  
Yutaka entered the room with a bandaged left arm.  
"Give me a hug, Lucy." He pleaded with arms out ready for the embrace.  
Lucy planted herself within his arms and embraced him tightly.  
"I told you I would be fine." Yutaka said with a smile.  
"I'm so glad that you are." Lucy replied lovingly.  
Joseph stood and smiled at the embrace, thinking it was touching.  
"I need to go to the bathroom." Yutaka hinted, forcing Lucy to end their hug.  
He left the room and Lucy smiled, happy that Yutaka will still be sticking around.  
She turned to Joseph and giggled with him.  
"You're cute." Lucy remarked to him.  
Joseph was touched by her heartfelt comment and nervously returned the favour.  
"So are you, a lot." He commented with a nervous giggle.  
Lucy was also touched by this and lowered her head to Joseph's and kissed his forehead gently, leading her to giggle again and blush.  
Joseph blushed equally and smiled, rubbing his forehead with his hand at the novel feeling it gave him.  
Lucy then pounced on him, tackling him to the ground in a glomping maneuvre.  
"You're too slow." She mocked him as she looked down on her loving best friend.  
"Is that true? Let me try again." Joseph replied with a cheeky smile.  
Lucy withdrew her Glaive from her backpack and showed it to Joseph.  
"Impressive wouldn't you agree?" Lucy asked as one of the stainless silver blades pointed at Joseph's face.  
"You're creepy, Lucy." Joseph remarked as he stared down the crystal clean blade, gulping as he did so.  
"I'm only showing you what it looks like." Lucy protested her innocence.  
Joseph then smiled, playfully hitting Lucy's waist to make sure she knew she was fooled.  
"You got me." Lucy grinned as she dropped her Glaive on the floor and crouched down over Joseph who lay back on the floor.  
As she began to giggle, she was stopped and silenced when she saw two white, laced trained shoes connected to a pair of tattered jeans covered legs situated immediately behind Joseph's head.  
Lucy looked up further, mortified to see a blood stained white t-shirt, a duo of pale arms, a pale face with hostile bright blue eyes and scruffy, matted short black hair atop the head.  
Lucy was mortified, falling back against the hard wooden floor, eventually sat with her back pressed hard against the wall. She was also wide eyed in shock.  
"Daddy leave me alone!" She shrieked in as innocent a voice as she could manage.  
Lucy was breathing heavily with ample amounts of worrying.  
"Stop messing with others thinking they are your friends. They are not, Lucy, for you are condemned to a life of misery." Lucy's father, Nick explained. Lucy convinced herself it was all lies but it did not stop the worrying forcing its way into her mind.  
At that moment Lucy had realised that she was not in her room at Syiren's apartment anymore and Joseph was noticeably absent.  
Instead this new room had a white ceiling and walls and a creaky wooden floor. Large amounts of blood smeared the walls and floor as if a decorator had decided crimson paint splashes worked well with white and the flushed out brown of the floor.  
A single circular ceiling light flickered like it was going to burst at any given second.  
It did not and that was entirely unhelpful to poor Lucy who was certainly not relaxed and very agitated and anxious as she sat in one corner of the room with her back pushed hard against the blood soaked wall.  
This was before she had realised that she was behind bars, sitting on the cold base of a dense, unfriendly looking cage.  
"That is where you have always belonged, Lucy, for your own good." Her mother, Francine's voice could be heard. Lucy could see the pale bright blue eyes of Francine in a hole in the floor, staring coldly at Lucy.  
"But why?" Lucy asked, all confused and on the verge of tears as she attempted to grasp the cage bars with her hands but could feel nothing.  
Nobody answered her question. She once again felt isolated, lonely and empty just like she had for most of her almost entirely miserable life, trapped alone in a blood soaked room and locked within an unforgiving cage as if she was some circus freak for people to stop and stare at.  
By now she had long since been reduced to tears and she sobbed loudly.  
A blackened humanoid creature with sharp claws on its hands and a featureless mass where its face was meant to be passed by in front of the cage and disappeared just as Lucy blinked, returning her to the room she occupies in Syiren's apartment.  
The creature offered this quote to Lucy:  
"I can only see through you." It said in a deep, bleak tone of voice.  
Lucy did not know what it meant by this as she set her blood red eyes on Joseph as she sat on the soft blue carpet in one corner of the room with tears streaming down her cheeks.  
Joseph felt sad for Lucy and sat beside her, putting an arm around her and letting Lucy rest her head gently against his shoulder.  
"Thank you." Lucy said as she appreciated Joseph's comforting gestures towards her.  
"Are you OK?" Joseph asked her with concern.  
"Yeah, now you're with me." Lucy replied sincerely and sweetly as a tear of hers fell ontp the palm of Joseph's hand. They both smiled at each other as it glistened in the daylight.  
"Cherish that for me." Lucy grinned at Joseph.  
"I will." Joseph promised as Lucy's tear glistened like their romance.  
They rested one another's head against each other's as they sat together and even fell asleep in those positions, making Mia and Yutaka smile when they saw the two of them sleeping against each other.  
"They make such a great couple." Yutaka smiled as he thought of their fondness for each other.  
"They do." Mia replied with a smile also.

Mia and Yutaka left the two of them sleeping in peace.  
Three hours later, and Joseph had just completed a phone call to his parents.  
He ran immediately up to Lucy, now wearing her favourite blue dress and hugged her, wrapping his arms tightly around her.  
"I can stay tonight!" He exclaimed, giddy with excitement.  
Lucy smiled warmly at him.  
"That's so great." She said happily.  
Lucy sailed over to Yutaka to report the good news.  
"That's great, Lucy. I think it's time you go to slumber land now." Yutaka said with a smile.  
"OK, Yutaka." Lucy obeyed and gave Yutaka a quick hug before she grabbed Joseph and set off towards Lucy's bedroom.  
"Goodnight, Mr Keiji. Dinner was great." Joseph remarked politely. Yutaka saluted him with a typical military appreciation hand gesture.  
Joseph laughed as he and Lucy disappeared into her bedroom, promptly closing the door afterwards.  
"You're so kind." Lucy remarked as she looked at Joseph, wearing another smile.  
"Thanks. It's a family thing and it helps to have you around too." Joseph replied with a sweet smile of his own.  
"Aww you make me feel special. Am I special?" Lucy remarked and then asked.  
"Of course you're special. I don't fall in love with anybody who isn't." Joseph replied sweetly as he put his arm around her.  
Lucy giggled nervously.  
"I...I'm touched." Lucy said, almost rendered speechless as she placed her hand upon her chest where her heart is.  
She almost cried from how touched she felt.  
Lucy climbed into her bed and pulled the cover over her body.  
Joseph followed her and likewise pulled the bed cover over him as he lay on the other side.  
"Goodnight, my little sweet Joseph." Lucy remarked with a smile as she glanced in his direction.  
"Goodnight, my cute loving Lucy." Joseph replied instinctively.  
Funnily enough Lucy had already fallen asleep.  
"Long day, huh?" Joseph muttered to himself with a smile.  
It did not take him long to follow Lucy's lead and join her in dream land.  
The night had become a vast, dark world outside. The lights mysteriously never turned on, leaving the streets a deserted, bleak outpost for the occasional Invincibles gang member as they were clad in in red hoodies and tight denim jeans.  
Despite the darkness that enveloped the grimy streets, their drug dealing operation in the area was going down a storm.  
They also seemed to have a fair loathing for Lucy and Yutaka as various conversations between the unhygienic gang members muttered variations on a little girl in a blue dress and a hyped up ninja, referring to them as creepy scum.  
The streetlights remained off as if a power cut had struck the area although this did not trouble the loud mouthed gang and their motives.  
Lucy woke up around about this time. Her eyes were a creepy shade of blue and her pale face wore the darkest of smiles.  
Creeping out of bed to assure herself that Joseph would not awaken, she picked up her Glaive and wandered aimlessly into the cold, dark night.  
Gang members littered the street smoking joints of cannabis and concuming large amounts of strong alcohol.  
Lucy hid in the shadows, her eerie eyes watching over the filthy teenagers with their coded Invincibles dress sense.  
Two of them were deep in conversation nearby to Lucy's location.  
"The drugs are selling thick and fucking fast, man." One said, a blue eyed, blonde haired male with a deep, unforgiving voice.  
"I know, dude. People know it's the shit." The other remarked. He was of Jamaican descent and had long, flowing dreadlocks, brown eyes and his native accent.  
"Some have told me a little girl walks these streets around about now wearing a blue dress, murdering anyone daring enough to be near to her." The first said with a snigger.  
"Like fuck, man people make up the craziest shit." The second chuckled heavily.  
"Yo I'm off, man I'll catch you in a bit." The second continued.  
The first nodded as the second disappeared into the darkness.  
He went to a shadowed corner, unzipped his jeans and proceeded to urinate on the cold, grimy wall.  
He looked up for a moment to see a pale face and hauntingly pale blue eyes staring piercingly at him from the shadows.  
Lucy stepped out of the shadows, Glaive in hand.  
"Please don't do anything to me." He begged as he abruptly zipped up his jeans.  
"You're an Invincible. I would like to test that." Lucy remarked, her little girl's voice sounding menacing and dark.  
In a rush of blood to the head, the gang member punched Lucy full on in the jaw, cutting it open.  
Blood began to drip from her mouth, falling onto her dress.  
"How do you like that?" The gang member taunted, suddenly full of confidence.  
"It hurt a little, but it's nothing compared to what I have planned for you." Lucy replied darkly as she wiped her mouth on her wrist, smearing it with blood.  
Lucy darkly giggled and reacted with insane speed. Using one blade of her Glaive she stabbed him in his right foot, punching it all the way through and impaling his foot painfully, even with it being encased within a white trainer shoe.  
The gang member screamed in pain as blood spurted up and out of his shoe, smearing along the floor soon afterwards.  
Lucy watched him fall to his knees with glee and pulled the Glaive hard out of his foot, not caring if it added extra pain or not.  
More blood flowed freely from his wound as Lucy began to brutally carve a red line from the corner of the gang member's mouth to his left ear and repeated the trick, slowly and painfully for the other side of his mouth to his right ear, resulting in two deep cuts that looked like a freaky and very wide smile.  
Blood dripped from the two long cuts as Lucy giggled sadistically.  
The gang member could not scream or face the harsh, grisly consequences.  
Finally, Lucy stabbed him hard through his back, puncturing his heart. This made the gang member scream, causing the two wide cuts on his face to tear open from one side to the other, gruesomely ripping his face apart as blood sprayed from the tears onto the nearby wall and splashing across the floor.  
The gang member fell forwards as squelching sounds continued to bellow out from his torn open face as copious amounts of blood spilled onto the floor.  
The gang member was all but dead, spasms from his arms and legs indicate that he is on his last few breaths.  
Lucy, weakened from her own cut, took the blood soaked Glaive from his body, spurting more blood into the air.  
She ran clumsily and weakly out of the sight of any other Invincibles gang member and stumbled towards a yellow Ford Mustang, where she leaned against the front of it. Her vision started to dilate and become blurred as her blood continued to drip from her mouth and began to decorate the car's bonnet with red spots.  
Lucy could hardly stand up as she leaned with her hands on the classic muscle car's bonnet with more and more of her blood staining the otherwise clean yellow paint job.  
Finally Lucy succumbed to her weak feeling and fell onto the floor and quickly became unconscious, not helped by the impact of hitting the ground as she lay sprawled out on her back.  
The streetlights began to turn on one by one, illuminating the previously dark and foreboding roads, as if it was an afterthought to Lucy's unconscious state.

Waking up at a respectable time in the morning, Lucy stared motionless at the ceiling momentarily. The sun was up, descending its rays upon Belmont from its perch in the sky.  
Lucy sat up and saw her mother Francine staring back at her from the other side of the bed.  
Francine's creepy pale blue eyes freaked Lucy out, reducing the nine year old to tears.  
"Remember what is embedded within you." Francine quoted in a haunting, echoed version of her voice.  
"Leave me alone!" Lucy yelled, upset and afraid.  
Soon after, Francine faded into Joseph, who was awake and sitting up directly opposite Lucy.  
Lucy looked at herself to note that she was wearing her school uniform again, all washed and cleaned.  
Lucy remembered wearing her blue dress when she went to bed.  
She looked down upon the floor to see her Glaive sparklingly clean and in exactly the same position that she left it before going to bed.  
"Are you OK, Lucy?" Joseph asked with concern.  
Lucy's cheeks were moist with tears as she looked at her friend. She nodded quietly before making an attempt to clamber out of bed.  
Still half asleep, she fell to the floor on her hands and knees, groaning as if she was tired or struggling to get her body to work at its typical function.  
She looked down at her dark, messy hair dangling onto the soft blue carpet, surprised to see it was all moist.  
This morning was really mystifying her and she ended up more than a little confused.  
"Joseph, why is my hair wet?" Lucy asked, still half asleep.  
"I don't know." The young boy replied instantly and plainly.  
Lucy sat down on the carpet and rolled one leg of her trousers up to her knee to attend to another so called problem, the leg she hurt falling to the floor and the unforgiving impact.  
"Is it OK?" Joseph asked, noticing Lucy tending to her leg with her hands.  
"Yeah, it's just a bruise I think." Lucy replied when her eyes scanned thoroughly over her leg.  
Lucy sensed another presence when a substance hit her arm.  
A crimson coloured spatter appeared on that arm. It was blood.  
The dreadful sound of blood hitting the floor could be heard.  
Lucy looked up slowly to see her father Nick looking down at her, blood dripping from his mouth.  
He was smiling and his pale blue eyes looked unforgiving.  
Terrified and shaken, Lucy could not scream nor move, such was her fear.  
She looked away from Nick deliberately, down at the floor.  
She sniffled as tears escaped her eyes.  
Lucy also realised she was not sitting on her bedroom carpet, but on an old, creaky wooden floor.  
"Your powers will only bring you pain and anxiety, Lucy." Nick remarked with a chillingly deep, echoed voice. He chuckled darkly afterwards before fading away into nothingness.  
Lucy was sitting in the middle of an unsettling, creaky room with tattered and scorched cream coloured wallpaper, some of it peeling away to expose sticky white paste.  
A single, flickering light bulb hung precariously from the ceiling and outside beyond the small windows, the skyscrapers of Belmont were on fire and the sky lit a harsh blood red colour, the swirling clouds passing by chillingly quick.  
All this added up to terrify poor Lucy as she felt isolated and lonely while sat motionless on the creaky brown wooden floor.  
The ghosts of her parents flickered in front of her before dissolving into laughter.  
Lucy's panicked breathing was loud and rushed as she looked around, now completely frightened. She was crying loudly and tears flowed down her cheeks like waterfalls.  
"Look beside you." Whispered her mother with a lot of echo.  
Lucy did so and discovered a book beside her on the cold floor. She picked it up and saw for herself Francine's bible.  
The pages fluttered open automatically. When they stopped, the words on display described the subject of purifying a possessed being.  
"You must do this, Lucy." Francine instructed through her echoed voice, though still not seen.  
"I...I can't." Lucy sobbed as two of her tears stained the bible's pages, melting it away into nothingness.  
As Lucy wiped her tears away, a blank, featureless black mass where a face was meant to be appeared in front of Lucy's face followed by sharp claws that appeared before her. It soon disappeared but spoke out in a creepy yet deep voice.  
"Remember what's inside you." It said before Lucy looked down again. She was back in her bedroom, still sobbing and shaking, frightened by her horrific hallucinations.  
Joseph looked at Lucy, deeply worried and concerned about her.  
Lucy was still situated in the middle of the room, sitting there as before, sobbing her eyes out.  
Joseph dropped down from the bed and crouched next to the frightened Lucy.  
"I'm here now." He began with a soft voice.  
Lucy looked at him and smiled through her tears. They embraced each other with a warming hug.  
"I'm sorry." Lucy apologised with little reason.  
"What for? Something was obviously scaring you." Joseph replied sympathetically.  
Lucy smiled at Joseph, glad that he understands the weird episodes her mind takes her through. At least she thinks it is her mind.  
"You're all warm." Joseph giggled, changing the subject.  
"Like my love for you." Lucy replied, giggling with him.  
Joseph smiled sweetly at her and they cuddled warmly with each other.  
"Thank you." Lucy said with little reason again.  
"For what?" Joseph asked, still smiling.  
"Being there for me. Being my friend. Nobody has before." Lucy replied, getting tearful again.  
"That's because you are sweet and kind. I can't understand why you're snubbed all the time." Joseph continued, feeling sad for Lucy.  
"Because apparently I'm a freak, I'm ugly and I'm smelly." Lucy replied as tears cascaded down her cheeks like raindrops.  
"You're not ugly." Joseph tried reassuring her, brushing his hand through Lucy's hair, moving it away from obstructing her face so he could get a proper look at it.  
"See. I think you're pretty." Joseph continued with a smile.  
Lucy blushed and giggled, resting her head on his shoulder as Joseph stared at her and smiled.  
A few moments passed by and Lucy had risen to her feet, sensing her cousin, Yutaka, was now up and about.  
"Come on." Lucy coaxed Joseph as they found their way into the lounge area.  
Yutaka sat, gazing intently at the television, on one particular news report:  
"Florida and particularly one of its cities, Belmont, is bracing itself for Hurricane Alma, a category four storm at present but is predicted to get strong enough for a category five rating when it reaches the Florida coast. It has so far ripped through the Caribbean and part of Mexico to devastating effect." The news reporter explained with quick, loud speech.  
"Fuck me." Yutaka muttered to himself as he gasped in shock.  
"It will not be arriving for at least another four days yet." Syiren explained from the kitchen.

"What do you mean? That is not long at all." Yutaka answered back as he tensed up.  
"Well it's long enough to get prepared for it." Syiren remarked as she made two cups of tea, one for herself and the other for Yutaka.  
"We also have the pressing matter of Lucy's court case tomorrow." Yutaka added, changing the subject.  
"I know. It's unusual though, being on a Sunday and all." Syiren continued om Yutaka's new chosen subject.  
"I feel sorry for her. After all the poor girl has been through, she is being made to feel guilty over something she did in self defence. If anything she is the victim." Yutaka expressed his feelings over the matter as he talked about Lucy and her fight with Emily.  
"Well personally I think it is extremely cruel to make a child have to face up to a court in the first place." Syiren said with her own thoughts.  
Lucy slumped into Yutaka's arms, still half asleep as a smiling Joseph sat beside them.  
Regardless of this, Yutaka continued with his conversation, only acknowledging Lucy's presence with a smile and stroking Lucy's hair which he continued to do while talking to Syiren.  
"Well I just hope that the judge sees that Emily's parents are crazy like we think they are." Yutaka said in hope.  
Lucy gazed innocently at him, looking slightly upset.  
"I don't want to go." Lucy groaned in a typical fashion of any little girl.  
"Neither do I But unfortunately we have to, to prove those fuckers wrong." Yutaka explained softly.  
Lucy buried her face into Yutaka's arm, clearly upset about the whole ordeal as Joseph looks on solemnly, sad in the fact that his best friend would have to a room full of very serious and humourless people who's only real purpose in life seems to be going over criminal records and then charge or free the defendant.  
Lucy was terrified that she would be be harshly punished for just over self defence, albeit in a grotesque manner.  
"I'm scared." Lucy stated in an upset, frightened tone of voice.  
"I know, Lucy but there is nothing we can do until tomorrow." Yutaka explained to her as he gave her a warming hug to calm her down.

Lucy only calmed down a little and suddenly took Yutaka to the scene of her alleged crime.  
It showed Emily hitting her across the mouth which caused her to fall to the floor with blood oozing from her mouth. It showed the chanting crowd of children gathered around them on the moist and muddy field, then Yutaka got to witness Emily kicking Lucy full on in the stomach as she tried to get up, making her cough up more blood as she fell to the ground again.  
Yutaka could do nothing as he was only in Lucy's mind set, but it upset him all the same, seeing his little nine year old cousin who he cares so much for in such a state.  
He saw Lucy was covered in mud and her blood continued dripping from her mouth and onto her clothes and the grass.  
Lucy's mind showed him how Emily taunted her by calling her weak and inferior, how Mia found out and became upset by the scene and how Emily tried to kick out at Lucy again, only this time Lucy reacted by pulling Emily's leg, causing the bully to fall flat on her back.  
Lucy's mind showed how she pinned Emily down by sitting on her stomach. Then Emily began taunting her again, saying that Lucy would not dare to hit her, which made Lucy react by punching the bully in the face twice around the eyes which caused Emily to complain that she could not see.  
Then Yutaka witnessed Lucy snapping Emily's fingers by forcing them back with her own, and how Lucy felt ultimately guilty when she began to run away from the stricken, crying bully but fell to the floor from weakness and vomited horribly onto the wet grass where Mia shortly after, helped her up.  
"My god." Yutaka uttered, rendered speechless by what his younger cousin's mind had shown him.  
"That is what happened I swear." Lucy cried out with a panicking, shaken voice.  
"I believe you, Lucy. I'm just shocked by how that girl is so evil towards you." Yutaka said calmly as he hugged his cousin tightly, himself upset at what she had to go through.  
Joseph sat beside them, gazing at Lucy and feeling more than a little sad himself about the situation.  
"You will be OK won't you?" Joseph asked Lucy.  
Lucy turned around to look at him.  
"I think so." Lucy replied with some uncertainty which did not make Joseph feel any better.  
After they had consumed their breakfast, at which point Mia, Louis and Hideo had awakened from their slumber, Yutaka was preparing to ask Lucy about the mysterious appearances of her mother and father and was distracted by a second news report.  
"News just in. There has been a fourth murder that took place in the early hours of this morning in the same district as the other three. Kieran Bullford was killed with a sharp, bladed weapon that was used to rip open his face at the mouth, impale his foot and puncture his heart. The horrific facial injury is known as the Chelsea Smile in countries like England as a wide incision is made from the corners of the victim's mouth to the ears. There was blood everywhere and it was like a grisly scene from a horror movie. Blood was also spotted on the bonnet of a nearby Ford Mustang which is believed not to be Kieran's own." Explained the news reporter clearly.

"Oh not again. It's like a fucking mad house in this city at the moment." Hideo called out suddenly.  
"I know, Hideo, this district has gone to shit recently, more so if it hadn't already." Yutaka agreed.  
Lucy's sad expression remained, still feeling partially guilty over her fight with Emily. Yutaka noticed this.  
"What's the matter?" He asked her kindly.  
"Nothing." Lucy lied plainly.  
"No, Lucy. You must tell me what is wrong." Yutaka urged her hastily.  
Lucy just looked at him stubbornly with her red eyes.  
"Please, Lucy you must tell me. I beg of you." Yutaka urged Lucy again.  
"I feel guilty." Lucy replied plainly.  
"For what?" Yutaka asked hurriedly.  
"I beat her up." Lucy answered cleanly, referring to Emily.  
"So, the little bitch deserved it for being such a stupid fucking bully." Yutaka continued on the conversation, trying to convince Lucy that what she did was perfectly acceptable.  
"I wish it never happened." Lucy replied, still feeling down about the whole thing.  
"Well that's life, Lucy. It happens. Anyway, we'll make sure you emerge from that court room victorious and life can go back to normal." Yutaka said confidently.  
"Normal isn't an option for me." Lucy remarked, now mocking herself.  
"Well as close to normal as possible then. You are a wonderful little girl and anybody who can't accept that then fuck 'em." Yutaka said, full of praise for his younger cousin.  
"Thank you, Yutaka." Lucy said blushing from embarassment and that she is not used to being complemented.  
Joseph smiled too, pleased to see Lucy had perked up a little.  
"I'm only telling the truth, Lucy." Yutaka grinned.  
Later on as the night loomed over Belmont again and Joseph had long since departed home, Yutaka and Mia were sorting out the clothing for the next day in court, Hideo and Syiren were making tea for themselves, Louis was taking a nap and Lucy had just slipped into her favourite blue dress.  
From there, she went on to watch TV and predictably flicked over to the music channels.  
There, she watched with slight disappointment that her musician heroes All That Remains were not on at this moment in time.  
As she settled down to watch the channel regardless, her mother Francine appeared on the television against a noisy, static background.  
Francine was now looking increasingly like a zombie, with skin peeling away from her face, exposing flesh beneath it.  
Francine's matted black hair was a mess and her clothes torn far beyond repair.  
Lucy cowered behind a cushion.  
"You can't hide from me, Lucy so you may as well face up to it." Francine remarked, her voice sounding increasingly warped and demon like.

Lucy began to whimper uncomfortably again at yet another appearance of her mother's apparition.  
Hideo noticed this and came to Lucy's aid, though he had no idea what was going on.  
"Lucy what's wrong?" He asked curiously.  
Lucy looked at the television which had gone back to normality and then at Hideo.  
"Mommy keeps haunting me." Lucy replied chillingly, making Hideo feel a little uncomfortable.  
Hideo headed to Yutaka and requested to him:  
"Can I talk for a few minutes with you?" He asked Yutaka.  
"OK, Hideo. Mia could you leave us alone for a few minutes? But no listening through the door." Yutaka requested towards Mia.  
"Yeah sure. Just tell me when you're done." Mia replied, closing the door behind her.  
"OK what is it, Hideo?" Yutaka asked, quiet enough to make sure nobody other than Hideo can hear him.  
"I don't want to say this, but I think Lucy is an extremely disturbed child and at the moment I feel uncomfortable in her presence." Hideo replied in a serious but shaking tone of voice.  
"Yes I know, Hideo but she is my cousin and my responsibility and I love her very much. I don't know what you're suggesting, but what did she say?" Yutaka tried reasoning with Hideo before asking him a question.  
"She said something about her mother haunting her all the time and when I asked her, she looked and sounded angry." Hideo explained as best he could.  
"Hideo, man, Lucy is not a normal little girl and she knows that. She suffers from hallucinations and she's psychic. To be honest, I don't like where this conversation is heading." Yutaka explained more sternly.  
"Hear me out, Yutaka please. I just cannot be around that girl anymore. She creeps me out." Hideo pleaded with Yutaka.  
Yutaka took it angrily.  
"You want me to ditch her don't you. Leave her to rot in some filthy corner of Belmont. I thought I could trust you." Yutaka said with anger and pity for Hideo.  
"It's for our own safety." Hideo protested.  
"Fuck off!" Yutaka exclaimed with anger.  
Hideo shook his head in shame at Yutaka and turned to the bedroom door, which had mysteriously opened without them knowing and Lucy stood in the doorway with her unkempt long black hair hanging over her face and with her Glaive in her right hand.  
"Lucy what are you doing?" Yutaka asked in surprise.  
Lucy pointed her finger in Hideo's direction.  
"Traitor." She whispered hauntingly and she walked slowly and menacingly into Hideo's path.  
"No, please you don't understand." Hideo began protesting.  
Lucy did not listen but stopped in her tracks for a moment and let out a demonic scream, low in pitch but loud in sound. Lucy's face had by now revealed itself. It looked ghost like and pale and her eyes a creepy shade of blue.  
Yutaka's face had a look of shock after seeing this but Lucy herself was entirely focussed on Hideo as she walked menacingly towards him again.  
Lucy swiped her Glaive hastily at him which Hideo dodged at the last minute.  
"I told you. She's insane." Hideo yelled in Yutaka's direction.  
"That is not Lucy." Yutaka remarked as Hideo had to dodge another swipe of Lucy's Glaive.  
"What are you, blind? Your freaky cousin is trying to kill me!" Hideo exclaimed as Lucy missed him again with another swing of her Glaive.  
Then as Hideo tried to dodge again, the Glaive stabbed him in the arm.  
Blood spurted onto the wall from the freshly made wound and this caused Hideo to become enraged.  
"You fucking bitch!" He yelled in anger and threw himself at Lucy although Yutaka held him back.

"Get off me!" Hideo snarled as he continued to fight off Yutaka to get to Lucy.  
Lucy stood watching Hideo desperately trying to shake her older cousin off with the darkest of smiles on her pale face, seemingly with pride.  
"Just let go, you imbecilic prick." Hideo demanded towards Yutaka.  
Yutaka turned Hideo around and with a karate style chop to the back of Hideo's neck with the side of his hand, the force of which knocked the raging ninja out cold.  
Mia had sneaked up behind Lucy with a silver metal pole.  
Lucy was already occupied though, her haunting bright blue eyes were fixed to Yutaka as she headed slowly towards her ninja cousin.  
Yutaka did nothing, except to say:  
"It isn't you, is it Lucy." Lucy did not answer, primarily because Mia had hit her hard enough with the metal pole to the back of her head, knocking Lucy unconscious and sending her sprawling across the floor.  
"It's for your own safety, sis." Mia remarked with a sad expression on her face as she did not want to have to come to that decision against her younger sister.  
"You did what you had to do, Mia." Yutaka sighed as he picked up the unconscious Lucy and tucked her into her bed calmly.  
"What do we do with him." Mia asked Yutaka when he came back into his and Hideo's bedroom.  
Leave the prick there. He doesn't deserve any comfort for trying to hit, let alone fight, a little girl. Not any little girl, but my cousin and your sister." Yutaka explained his reasoning for leaving Hideo slumped against the wall.  
"Yeah I guess you're right, Yutaka. Thinking of it that way." Mia said, sounding as if she had changed her mind.  
"I am right. If Hideo even lays a finger on Lucy, I will kill him." Yutaka revealed, making Mia wide eyed in shock.  
"You will kill him?" Mia asked in that surprise.  
"I will kill him. I will not have anybody around who wishes death or harm upon my cousin whether she seems possessed or not." Yutaka explained, still raging inside about the events that unravelled earlier.  
"Yeah you're right. Anybody who wishes bad stuff upon my sister deserves to be condemned." Mia remarked with anger now in her own voice.  
"Exactly and now Hideo has proved he cannot be trusted, so that means I will be watching him very closely." Yutaka said, continuing angrily.  
"Where does that leave tomorrow?" Mia felt the need to ask, concerned about what Hideo may do in court.  
"I will subscribe Hideo sleeping pills, by force. I will not have him sabotaging Lucy's defence over what she did. Lucy had every right to do what she did, and she showed me earlier within her mind what went on." Yutaka explained with a sigh.  
"Well I think that's a plausible way of keeping him away." Mia said with a resigned smile, indicating her anger at Hideo.  
"Hideo has showed he is like a lot of other people now though. He cannot accept the fact that Lucy is far from a normal little girl. I hate people like that, those that cannot accept people for who they are. Sure, we saw what I think is not Lucy not long ago, and I think it is that side of her that killed those members of yours and her own family back in Kuromokuzai." Yutaka continued to express his thoughts over his younger cousin.  
Mia became shocked again as Yutaka predicted this.

"So you think that this, demon thing inside Lucy's body or whatever it is, used her to kill members of my family?" Mia enquired with surprise and interest.  
"Yes I do. Lucy does not seem to me like the sort of girl who would want to kill somebody, no matter how much she hates them." Yutaka responded calmly.  
"I wholeheartedly agree with you, Yutaka. Lucy would not harm a soul unless seriously provoked, and even then she would never put their lives in danger." Mia agreed, knowing that she knew Lucy even better than Yutaka because of course she had been growing up with her younger sister until she went missing...

Meanwhile Lucy was in dream world and inevitably was not something she would want to think about.  
The humanoid, blackened creature with a featureless mass for a face and claws instead of hands taunted the nine year old in a petrol and oil soaked room complete with antique clock, classically designed sofa and rug and a fire place that was turned on at the slightest level.

To be continued...


End file.
